Strategic Planning and Management Insights

 

Looking to add to your reading list this fall? We’ve reviewed 10 books on strategy and leadership, and here are our favorites (in no particular order):

The first step that any effective strategy facilitator takes is to understand their problems. Every company’s problems are unique, and we always take that into account. However, we’ve gathered data on 500 people and their biggest strategy roadblocks. Over 75% fall into three key buckets: Understanding the process, getting alignment and setting and keeping strategic goals. As understanding the problem is the first step to productive problem solving, this post highlights them and offers tips to help. 

Image: Public Domain Pixbay

Jane Watson,the Head of People at Actionable (actionable.co), chatted with us about organizational culture, and its relationship with strategy. With experience across many sectors, Jane has worked with a multitude of teams and people, and has worked in the HR sphere for over 15 years. When it comes to organizational culture, there are a few key takeaway learnings: 

• Culture cannot be created or simply redesigned; it's not a top down decision. Culture manifests through a reciprocal process, and can be fostered and adjusted through communication, collaboration, and behavior reinforcements. 
• Fostering a culture that reflects your organizational values and strategy is important. Make sure to reward behaviors that encourage what you're trying to accomplish. 
• Treat your team like responsible adults; that's what they are. 
• Rather than acting as an enforcement arm, leadership teams, management and HR, should instead work together with teams to support their growth. 

Listen to our full podcast interview with Jane Watson below, where she goes into depth about the importance of aligning strategy, performance and your team.  

In this edition of the Strategy and Leadership Podcast, I interview Shane Wright of Paladin Security.

Shane is the Director of Operations, Vancouver Island, at Paladin Security Group Ltd., and he has been with the company for 6 years. What I appreciate about this conversation is hearing about some of the tactics Paladin used to develop the people in their organization, and how Shane was able to follow a set growth trajectory.

Every organization has a culture. Yours does too.

Some organizations care about "culture" more than others.

When you hear "culture"  what comes to your mind?

Last night my neighbour who is a journalist popped by our apartment in Brooklyn and I asked her what the sentiment is like for journalists in light of the recent political events and fake news.

She shared that the journalist community has been unified around their mission and the industry is emboldened around their purpose.

It got me thinking about the power of mission statements.

Many organizations look at mission statements as either a marketing exercise, or as simply a requirement as part of their strategic planning process.

If you're looking for a free business podcast that will provide you with real life examples of how companies and managers are driving Strategy and Leadership in their organizations, then you're going to love this podcast.

We launched the Strategy and Leadership Podcast as we were doing interviews for our next book called: Alignment: How to get your strategy, culture and people on the same page.

We were getting such great insights into the best practices from different managers that we thought that it would be a perfect opportunity to share those interviews with additional context and analysis.

You probably understand the benefits to strategy and strategic planning for the purposes of getting more effective execution on your action plans moving forward, but have you considered the impact of your strategy and culture on the retention of your staff?

As culture becomes a more central part of organizations like  Southwest, Zappos and other successes big and small, there is also a negative aspect to a culture that has a direct impact on your bottom line.

Understanding what might be going inside your organization means looking  under the surface of your P&L (Profit and Loss), employee reviews and HR department. 

Let's take a look at strategy and culture together, and while we do, think about your organization and examples of how this might be represented within your team.