Could this be you?
Ian Dennett, the Chief Executive of ID Supplies (IDS) was sitting in the board room with a smile on his face. It was a Thursday afternoon and the monthly executive management team review had just paused for a break. As the animated voices faded away down the corridor towards the coffee machine, he was thinking about what they had achieved over the past three years and how much he and his management team enjoyed working together these days.
Their revenue and PBIT had improved dramatically. So much so that a reporter from the FT had visited IDS recently and written an article that had attracted huge interest from potential customers, suppliers, partners and investors. IDS had just completed the move to a new site which provided space for the two companies that they had taken over and it was clear from talking to both old and new staff over lunch in the cafeteria that morale was good, in fact very good, and that they were bubbling over with ideas for beating the competition.
Best of all, the comments from customers which had been collected from one of a series of face-to-face "clearing sessions" over the last 12 months indicated clearly that they had noticed a very significant change in the way that IDS employees were working with them and they liked it a lot! Business was booming!
As he looked out of his office window at the Derbyshire peaks on the horizon, he reflected that things had been very different three years ago when he had been invited to take on the role of Chief Executive. He had spent the first three months meeting with customers, suppliers, employees and most revealingly, his team of senior managers. They were all first rate individuals but they seemed to spend all their time firefighting and dealing with one crisis after another. There were undoubtedly opportunities around for increasing revenue and particularly profit margins but the team didn't seem to be able to identify the best opportunities. When they did spot a good one, they just didn't seem to be able to make it happen. His managers had been working long hours and the results were not bad, but there was, he had felt, a lack of common purpose, a lack of alignment, a lack of purposeful energy.
With these feelings in his mind, he had called Martin Cooke, a long standing business colleague and had arranged to meet him the following week. Over coffee after dinner, Ian had described recent proposals from various management consultants. Their ideas were helpful but not quite what Ian was looking for. Martin had listened carefully and then asked three questions which Ian had never forgotten. The conversation had gone something like:
MARTIN: Where do you want IDS to be in 3 years time, where is IDS now and how will you get from where you are now to where you want to be?
IAN: I don't think that I could provide a good answer to any of those questions!
MARTIN: Then what you need is a strategic plan or better still a strategic planning process to get the answers you need.
IAN: One of the consultants I met with suggested something very similar but it was hugely expensive and I was doubtful that we'd implement successfully a strategic plan produced by someone else. It crossed my mind that if we had the time, myself and the other members of the Executive Management Team could probably develop a strategic plan, but it would be a painful process and take a lot of our time.
MARTIN: I agree with what you're saying, however, the option you might not have considered is to engage a strategic planning facilitator.
IAN: How would that work?
MARTIN: Let's imagine that you and your team wanted to make a journey through a remote part of the world that you knew little about. What's the first thing you'd do?
IAN: I'd hire a guide who would help us to work out the best route and then accompany us on the journey
MARTIN: Exactly! Give this guy a call (He wrote a 'phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Ian), meet with him and then let me know if he's the right guide for you.
Ian had called Charles Hobson first thing the next morning and fixed a meeting at the end of that week. At the meeting, Ian had described at some length what he'd noticed over the last few months. As the conversation progressed and Charles had described the work he'd done with other management teams, Ian had begun to see how a strategic planning facilitator could provide what he and his team needed. Ian and Charles had met several times during the next few weeks, designed a strategic planning process for IDS and an agenda for a two day workshop at a Country House Hotel in the Peak District six weeks later. The purpose of the workshop had been to develop a three year vision and strategy for IDS, to identify the projects critical to its success and to devise a systematic approach to managing their implementation.
The workshop was very successful and had proved to be a turning point for the management team. As they had walked across the car park to drive home afterwards, Bob Bastow the Operations Manager had said to Ian:
"I was a bit sceptical about strategic planning, however this workshop has been quite exellent. For the first time ever we all have a clear and shared vision of where we want IDS to be. We know where the best opportunities for growth are, what might knock us off course and best of all... we worked it out for ourselves! I'm 100% confident we can make this happen."
The executive management team had met every month since then to review the progress of the ten critical projects and to recover any that were falling behind. The acquisition of ABS and CDS had been two such projects, the new regional distribution centres had been a third and the development of a completely new marketing approach had been a fourth. During these progress reviews, Charles helped them to develop their project management skills and to use these new skills to define and drive each project to a successful conclusion.
Ian's thoughts returned to the present. He looked at the board room table and saw the copies of the original IDS strategic plan presentation that the team brought to every review. Although rather dog-eared and covered with scrawls, his own copy had a large tick by the side of each of the ten projects. He and his team had achieved their vision and with one or two minor exceptions, everything was in place just as they had foreseen it would be.
At that moment, Charles came back with two coffees. Ian turned to him and with a broad smile on his face said... "Thanks for your help today Charles. I'm dashing off in a couple of hours before the traffic gets busy so I can take my family off for a long weekend. Before I leave, I need to talk to you about setting up our next strategic plan review. It's almost exactly three years since the first one and we've achieved everything now that we set out to do. And also, are you free for lunch on the 23rd? I'd like you to meet Bob Wright the Chief Executive of EFSS and a long standing business colleague of mine. He called me the other day to talk about the way his organization is working. They seem to be treading water while we seem to be racing ahead. I told him about the way we've worked together and he's very keen to meet you ..."