http://www.integralseminars.org Fri, 08 Jul 2011 07:55:58 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2 http://www.integralseminars.org/target-action-planning-the-missing-link-between-strategy-and-tactics.cfm http://www.integralseminars.org/target-action-planning-the-missing-link-between-strategy-and-tactics.cfm#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:59:19 +0000 ewwink http://www.crawbot.co.cc/?p=593

Most businesses pride themselves on their brilliant strategies. However, ask how they translate strategy into tactics to generate results and they will predictably go silent.

What they lack is simply a goal- and priority-setting system to bridge strategy and tactics that creates action and accountability.

Target Action Planning (TAP) is a technique you can use when your company is embarking on a new initiative or effort with which it has little or no experience. This might be the development of a new market, the building or modifying of a distribution channel or the launch of a new product or concept, each of which spawns a new process in the organization. It may even support a newly created role among your staff.

Use TAP when your company needs to evaluate, assess and fine-tune its workload and priorities. TAP involves assessing the skills, resource allocation and priorities of your business and how closely they align with your strategic directives.

Every company needs an effective system that aligns its people and departments with the common goals that correspond to the Critical Success Factors (CSFs)—the things that, if not done, will result in the company’s failing. TAP aligns company resources and provides the means to negotiate (cross-departmentally) for resource priority and allocation. This is a key area that plagues many organizations.

TAP brings balance, coordination and integration to the organization and minimizes personal agendas.

The seven steps of Target Action Planning

Step One: Define current tasks, priorities and projects for yourself and the employees who will use the TAP system

This list includes anything that is currently consuming company time, energy and effort. This is simply a definition phase. No assessments or judgments are made. Generate a document, using the following example, for each of these tasks.

The Target Action Planning (TAP) Document

Task or project (defined in 5 words): ____________________________

Status of task: ______________________________________________

(New assignment, work-in-progress, close to completion)

Target date for completion of task: _____________________________

Name of the employee managing this task: _______________________

Resources need to complete the task,

particularly cross-departmental or external company sources:

__________________________________________________________



__________________________________________________________

Step Two: Prioritize each of the projects or tasks identified in Step One

Rank each task as high, medium or low priority from the perspective of the individual or group that put the TAP document together for that task. Discuss CSFs with your staff during this ranking process. Most of us dedicate 70% or more of our time to “operational tasks,” things that are not necessarily critical to the business. The CSFs, however, usually correspond to the strategic initiatives that drive the business. Ask your staff what they believe to be the CSFs that support the business as a whole, their group’s function, and their individual function.

Step Three: Conduct a brainstorming exercise with your staff

You need to clear the slate so you can look at the picture without the constraints and priorities that revolve around your company’s current workload and tasks. Completely ignore, for now, what has been captured and ranked in Steps One and Two. (That information will resurface in a later stage in the process.) This step allows you and your people to think freely, both inside and outside the box. Bring up topics such as the company’s positioning and messaging, changing trends in the market, buying influences, the competitive landscape, assessment of the opportunity base, customer satisfaction (and retention), the effectiveness of your sales and distribution channel, acquisitions, and strategic alliances with third-party resources.

Sort out and document all output from this brainstorming session, grouping the entries in common categories—for example, market issues or sales-related considerations. The resulting list of priorities is your Hit List.

Step Four: Define the key areas of focus derived from the brainstorming session

Rank the items on the Hit List from most significant to least significant in terms of value and impact. Then, classify each entry as high, medium or low priority. At this stage, you need to get tough. Scrutinize your Hit List. Trade-offs may be required, but your final list should represent a valid picture of your company’s top priorities.

Each item on the final list will be compared to the Hit List captured in Step Three. They will either be a match, a pure mismatch, or in the “gray zone” (which means uncertainty) compared to the scope of key items discussed in the brainstorming session.

At this point, decide the fate of each item on the Hit List: commit and do it, reprioritize it and do it later (decide on a target start date) or eliminate it because it is not critical.

When you are done, the TAP process will have generated the undisputable priorities for your company.

Step Five: Compare the results of Step Four (what your company SHOULD BE doing) with the input from Steps One and Two (what your company IS doing)

This could be an eye-opener. You may discover that your people have been focusing on the wrong things—things that do not fuel CSFs.

Have your managers determine what (and to whom) they will delegate from their original task list to make room for more important priorities.

Step Six: Develop a new TAP document for each high- and medium-priority item on your Selected Final Hit List

The TAP document is a working action plan for a specific task or priority. A successful TAP document defines the task or project, the person responsible for it, and the team or cross-departmental resources that will be needed. It sets a realistic target date for completion, outlines specific details about what the task will produce or generate, and lists the specific steps necessary to complete the task. It also gives a clear definition of the expected results.

Step Seven: Implement the program

Conduct an orientation and kick-off session for your new priorities. Start slowly, tackling less challenging priorities and building from there. You want your people to taste success early and often.

Target Action Planning is simple, elegant and effective. How well does your company currently bridge strategy and tactics?



Are you ready to take a serious look at TAP and apply it to your business?

Copyright 2007

Performance Marketing Group

Edmond M. Hennessy

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It is a very frequent occurrence that the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is just an afterthought when preparing and negotiating a contract, and the buyer is usually waiting for the supplier to produce the SLA agreement. Of course, this leads to the situation in which the SLA actually protects the supplier, not the buyer.So here are the items one must do to achieve at least a reasonable if not good SLA:



Remember that any SLA is open for negotiation, but only in initial purchase- although the supplier may propose a very rigid position on the SLA (especially common in large companies), the SLA is part of the sales process. Standing by a rigid position should immediately raise red flags that the proposed “unchangeable” SLA is protecting the supplier, not the buyer. So the best opportunity to negotiate it is during the initial RFP negotiations. Once the product/service is sold and goes into production use, the buyer has lost all power of negotiation. So be very wary to agree that you will negotiate the SLA after delivery, end of warranty or some similar wording.

Define Availability as you would expect it – availability is usually calculated as a percentage of time the product under SLA is up and running. Usual numbers vary from 98% to 99.999% of the time. Now, let’s examine the “time” factor in the formula. Upon first reading, a person will usually interpret that 98% will be 98% of any time measure, whether it be hour, day, month, year, century…But let’s observe the following table:

In a SLA contract specifying a percentage of availability per time period, the total downtime is accumulated over the entire time period. Furthermore, if there is no time period specified in the availability percentage, the default time period is the period of the validity of the contract – which is very often 1 year or more. So, if you sign a yearly contract with an SLA of 99%, it doesn’t guarantee you that you will have at most 10 minutes of downtime per week. It means that you won’t have more then 3.65 days (or 86 hours) of downtime over the entire year, which means that you can have full 10 8-hour workdays WITHOUT ANY SERVICE in that year. If you take the same 99%, but insist on applying it on a weekly level, you suddenly get much better odds – now, you can’t have more then 1.68 hours of downtime in any of the days. So take a day of meetings in your company to define what is your maximum possible downtime per day, and use the above matrix to find the best option for you.

Always keep in mind the distinction between reaction time and correction time – During the negotiation of an SLA It is usual to have very tense negotiations to achieve a good “response time”. But this umbrella term is an excellent umbrella – for the supplier! Response time is defined as the time passing between formal logging of problem and until a representative from the supplier logs a response (sends a reply on e-mail, makes a phone call or arrives on-site). So when defining the response times, ALWAYS define two or three different times: reaction time - which is equivalent to response time, workaround time - the time in which it is expected to achieve a temporary solution which will alleviate the problem and correction time – the time in which it is expected that a final solution will be found.

Make precise definitions of problem severity levels and tie them in with reaction and correction times – as in my previous post, the severity of the problem can be viewed differently by the buyer and supplier. So, define a clear matrix of severity levels, and have a clause which states that if severity level differently, the view of the buyer prevails. A sample of severity levels are presented in the table below:



Define response time for all levels of severity - naturally, the buyer should expect faster reaction and correction for more severe problems. When defining the severity levels, in each one include at least the expected reaction time and workaround time.

Define channels of communication and escalation – At first glance a very simple thing, but one that is very often a reason for not being able to dispute the SLA contract. For the problem to be considered properly reported, the supplier will expect a report from an authorized person to specific persons via email, fax number or phone. Any deviation from the agreed upon process is an excellent reason for not meeting SLA parameters on the grounds of “not being informed”. So always have at least three authorized persons for problem reporting, and modify internal procedures so these persons are the first to be informed of a problem. The same is true for the escalation of problems to higher levels, should the problem persist.

Define the conditions under which the SLA criteria are applied to a problem - It is not uncommon in SLA agreements to see that the SLA criteria start to apply from the time of problem reporting from the buyer to the supplier. This is an element usually insisted upon by the supplier, since it offloads the burden of monitoring and reporting on the buyer. By the time the problem is reported, the actual problem is already existent for several minutes up to half an hour. Even more so, there are products for which the supplier cannot perform the monitoring and cannot conclude that a problem is occurring. So although this point will not be applied in the contract, adjust internal procedures so that the authorized persons of the buyer IMMEDIATELY report the problem to the supplier. Internal metrics can be even applied to this process, to identify internal lags in communication.

Define measurements and reporting - An SLA is useless if you can’t measure and document each problem length properly. So the buyer should keep track of problems, with info on the severity, duration of problem, reaction time and correction time, with all relevant e-mails and messages exchanged. Tracking can be achieved with something as simple as an excel sheet, all it requires is regular update.

Tie in penalties and contract back-out options – this is the actual big stick in the SLA. Breach of SLA parameters should be tied to serious penalties and possibility for contract termination. When defining penalties, always strive to define them in monetary value payable immediately upon breach of SLA. Also, you should try negotiate a penalty that has an exponential growth with each further hour of SLA breach. Do not accept a penalty to be compensated with other goods or services from the same supplier, since the supplier will value such services at sales price in the refund, while their internal costs for such services are significantly lower, thus reducing the actual loss of the supplier in SLA breach



 

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Clients often tell me they’re not really clear about the concept of Strategy. It’s a lot easier than you might think. Strategy is one of the steps in the planning process and cycle. The sequence in the business planning process is Vision, Mission, Goals, Strategy.

Vision is where you start and is the most abstract. Once clarified it become the guiding light toward which all your activities will be directed. Your Mission is what you do in your business to carry out your Vision. Goals are specific measurables that define what will exist when you’ve realized your Vision. The Strategy step is the thinking through of how you will achieve those Goals.

Start by considering the resources you have and the direction you want to go. Evaluate various scenarios and steps and predict how they will turn out. An analogy that makes it easier to understand is the game of chess. Various moves are considered with predicted outcomes BEFORE the actions are taken.

Some examples of Strategy might be:

- identify and develop an untapped market (based on observed trends);

- provide staff training and coaching (to strengthen customer service)

- redefine our brand (to fit our updated target market)

Developing a clear Strategy is critical because you’re going to base your Plan on your Strategy. As you know, it’s the activities you carry out in your day-to-day operations that produce the results you see at the end of the month. It is likely that you will have more than one Strategy because you’ll probably have several Goals.

There may be more than one Strategy for each Goal. An example might be to “create a contact database” and “hire a part-time assistant to manage your database”. You’re not actually at the Plan level until you determine the steps you’re going to take to hire that assistant (seek employee referrals, network word of mouth).

Bill Sipes, CPA, is founder and CEO of a community-based Accounting Business, which provides Tax Management, Write-up, Financial Services, Financial Support Systems and Business Valuation. He sees opportunities to add even more services and products and has decided to take on the persona of a Financial Advisor. I’d like to share the story of how he recently developed his Strategy for this business because it clearly exemplifies the process.

When there was an economic downturn in his local community, Bill realized he needed a new Strategy that would “turn his clients into cheerleaders” and turn around his bottom line. He decided to find out where his business had been coming from in the recent past.

He found out he got most business from 3 sources: mailing to professionals, new business/product mailing, and new sales to existing clients.

He called together his staff to discuss his findings and to ask for their help in determining a new Strategy. Following the meeting he sent out a summary of “what he heard” and asked for their continued thoughts. The staff were acknowledged and given a role in the process.

Here’s Bill’s memo to staff.

“Thanks to all. I think this is the most important meeting we have ever had. This is what I heard.

1. We need to separate ourselves from the other CPA firms.

2. Several ways to do this were mentioned. Speed of service was one. Another was building relationships.

3. We are going to develop a system of building relationships with our clients. Jane is going to write a rough script to follow whenever we get with a client…..The Moment of Truth.

4. I am going to ask Annette to print a few banners that say…..The Moment of Truth.

5. Jeff is going to check with the software people about Telemagic and Act.

6. We are going to spend more time “showing our face” in the community and to our clients.

7. When with a client always ask……How are we doing?

Thanks again for a great meeting……which I am sure will lead to a great system that will turn our clients into cheerleaders.”

Here’s Bill’s Strategy.

- Develop a plan to cross-sell existing clients.

- Continue to use Marketing Assistant to carry out marketing campaign to targeted list.

- Make Customer Service visits with our commissioned software salesman to cement relationships and try to cross-sell.

- Hire a commissioned insurance sales rep with a benefits background to sell Long Term Care Insurance as a new service (to cross-sell).

- Redefine our “brand”. Develop our new image to support our updated profile.

He’s building his redefined brand on “trusted relationships”. The staff is very enthusiastic and willing to support each other’s efforts. He also plans to have “Moment of Truth” banners made up to keep the staff focused on what’s important.

Bill is utilizing a Strategy that’s based on research into information about his own business and he has buy-in from his staff. He not only knows where he’s going, he has a Strategy to get there.

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