by Mandisa Makubalo
I’m sure we are all familiar with the culture of “strategic planning” which sees most businesses taking time out to plan for the year ahead. This practice has become a culture in such a way that massive budgets are allocated to these gatherings. These sessions should be about looking at ways to solve business challenges through design whether this is what happens nobody knows except when customers and employees start feeling the pain.
To illustrate what has been happening over the years I use the below analogy to demonstrate the approach most businesses take and are still taking till to date. For the purpose of this analogy we will use pseudo name Mary:
Mary is not feeling too well and as a result she decides to do some research using Google where she puts in her symptoms with the hope of finding out what is wrong with her. Based on the search results Mary concludes what her illness is. Mary then decides to visit a doctor, when she gets to the doctor, she tells the doctor about her symptoms and what she was able to find from her research. The doctor also concurs with her without doing any checks the doctor gives her a prescription for meds. 2 weeks later Mary dies as a result of the mis-diagnosis. Who is at fault here?
The above illustrates what happens in most strategic planning events which leaves most organization and customer’s bleeding as a result of subjective and impartial decisions made by a small minority. The process followed during these sessions excludes the critical stakeholders to the success of the successful implementation of these strategies.
The process of strategic planning should be as follows:
Step 1: Vision (should be clear and understood by all)
Step 2: Brainstorm (ways to accomplish the vision)
Step 3: Strategy
Step 4: Design
Step 5: Develop
In the above process the people responsible for design and development of the strategy should NEVER be excluded in the Vision and Brainstorm stages. In most cases these resources are left out of the strategic planning session.
There is critical process that bridges the Strategy and Design stage namely “Discovery”. The discovery phase focuses on these four key elements which are critical in the design strategy process:
Learn Business: understanding your business in terms of your value proposition
Understand Users: building personas, psychographics and journey mapping
Brand Definition: what is your business culture and voice
Prioritize Goals: revenue (how are you making money), awareness channels (how are you making users aware of your brand)
A key outcome of strategic planning will always be some form of change. The different types of changes might be process (review, application, product development process), system (technological, new programme, replacement), strategy (the way you will interact with customers), organizational structure (when acquisition or merger takes place, new roles or departments), leadership or culture changes. There will be changes at some point or multiple points in the organization as a result of strategic planning. The responsibility of the organization is to get everybody on board for the change taking place in the organization because if employees are not on board the change is never going to happen.
Organization should never be naïve in thinking that they can independently define, implement and keep the change going. There is a requirement to bring in expert skills to help them in making the change stick in the organisation. In each of the change stages the change expert will set a goal and would usually work with different levels within the client organization.
Contact us to help you across all of these or some of these.
Mandisa Makubalo is the founder of Unlimited Experiences, co-founder of WasteMinders, and Customer Experience Advocate. She is a highly experienced serial entrepreneur and change-maker. She is the founder of Unlimited Experiences SA, the first 100% black-owned customer experience management consultancy in South Africa, a business that helps companies become more customer experience centric. She is also the Co-Founder and CEO of a waste management non-profit organization called Waste Minders NPS, a company driving economic development through waste management and creating awareness around environmental degradation. Mandisa has studied and worked in customer environments for most of her professional career - her expertise lies in Strategic Planning, Design and Implementation and Service Excellence. Mandisa has been recognised and awarded for her exceptional leadership qualities throughout her career.
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