In this episode, we were joined by Rebecca Zucker, the Founding Partner at Next Step Partners, an executive coaching and leadership firm in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York. With a background in business and finance, Rebecca began career in investment banking, eventually branching into international strategic planning while working in Paris. When she returned to the US, she returned to banking in a training and leadership capacity, which led her towards her current path of executive coaching where she now focuses on the people side of business.
Fostering alignment and generating buy-in is an important part of the strategic planning process that should be started early on. Although organizational and departmental leaders may be the ones in the strategic planning meeting, employees can and should be consulted prior to and after the session. Questionnaires, interviews, and face-to-face conversation are great ways to generate employee participation throughout the process.
We’re excited to announce that our Managing Partner, Anthony Taylor, will be speaking at the Engage Strategy Conference that will be held April 28-30 in Portland, Oregon. Hosted by Cascade Strategy, the leading strategic planning software provider, this conference aims to develop excitement around strategy, help senior leaders and managers to develop and focus their teams, and to share strategic insights between attendees.
After you’ve developed your vision, mission, and values, the next step in the strategic planning process is defining your objectives, strategies and tactics (i.e. how you will carry out your strategic plan initiatives).
Jacob Engel, the CEO of YEDA LLC, a consulting and leadership training company in New York joined us for this episode of our Strategy & Leadership Podcast. Jacob’s work began in his family business that was started by his father, a Holocaust survivor. Over time, Jacob developed this organization, and when the financial market crashed in 2008, he was approached by various organizations and communities for guidance on developing and reinventing their businesses. Jacob has also written about the leadership ideas that his father shared with him, in his book, The Prosperous Leader.
Your organizational values consist of all of the behaviours that exist within your business - not just the positive values you want to have, but also negative or neutral behaviours that are being acted out.
Values and behaviours are closely tied to your company culture and can have an impact on those within as well as outside of your organization. Evaluating and understanding the current values and behaviours that are active within your organization can help you pinpoint which ones you would like to continue to reinforce and reward, and which ones you hope to change or add to your organization (i.e. what types of behaviours do we hope to see in the future?)
