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Threats are potential unfavorable situations that get in the way of achieving success. They may result in negative effects if ignored. A threat would be zero-growth budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.
After the lists have been gathered, managers can compare and contrast the ideas from their staff with those of clients and management. How close or far apart are the two groups in their perceptions of the current environment? More important, managers should lead a discussion on what they discovered about the department. The challenge and the purpose of this exercise is to identify those opportunities that present the greatest potential for the company and in which the department can play a major role. What strengths will help the department move toward those opportunities? What are the greatest obstacles facing the department (i.e., threats and weaknesses)? To overcome those obstacles, upon what strengths will the department draw?
In short, this is an important first step in taking responsibility for the departments destiny. It is the elimination of excuses and the beginning of a commitment to identify what is right, what needs fixing, and what must change. It is the foundation upon which the entire strategic objective will be built.
After looking at what the department is today, managers must look at what the department should become tomorrow. What the department should become...not what it wants to become. They may be the same, but all too frequently, a staff may simply want to continue to do what they already do better (i.e., training and support), and avoid the tough task of pursuing a new or different path (e.g., consulting). After all, if an individual has spent the past eight years as a trainer, and he or she is an effective trainer and knows their products well, they could find all this visionary talk threatening, particularly if someone suggests that perhaps training is no longer the most important service the department can provide for the company!
True strategic planning, however, involves objectivity and honesty. It means identifying and meeting the most critical business needs, which most likely means significant changes, not only in how daily jobs are performed, but in what those daily jobs even are.
Strategic planning consists of two components: long range (three to five years) and short range (one year). Long-range planning includes educated guesses at where the department will be and what it will need to offer the company. But it should be based as much as possible on what managers should review strategic planning documents from both the corporate and business unit levels. Where are they headed? How might the department help them get there? What is it that the department can do to add the most value to the company?
The answer, managers may discover, could mean they will have to drop some of what they are currently doing to allocate some resources (e.g., people, time, or budget) to support high-priority business needs. The one-year plan will actually be put into a written document. Before beginning that document, managers should take another look at the area of mission statements.
Once they have performed self-analysis and identified potential high-payback areas, managers must rewrite (or write for the first time) their new, all-improved, better-than-ever, future-bound mission statement. They should review the same set of questions provided earlier in this chapter, based on the information they have collected. Chances are managers will find their mission has changed. They may need to emphasize one area over another; they may drop some functions.
Whatever decision, managers should keep in mind the following guidelines for writing a mission statement. It should be brief, clear and simple, easy to remember, specific, realistic, and achievable. The ultimate test of an effective mission statement lies not in the appropriateness of the words chosen, but in how well it communicates the real purpose of the department to internal staff and clients.
An effective starting point is for managers to review other mission statements, good and bad. Then, they should start putting down the words and phrases that say what the department is and what it does. Once a consensus has been reached on the mission statement, it should be made visible. It should be more than pretty words on a piece of paper. It is the birth certificate that justifies the departments very existence.
At this point, managers have identified where the department is and what it is. They have listed the high-payback opportunities and projects. Now it is time to make a commitment in writing to the departments continual development plans.
In most books on strategic planning, several different words are used to define the same functions. Managers can call them whatever they want; but be sure to include the following elements in their strategic planning: key result areas, goals, and objectives.
Key result areas (KRAs) are the major, broad categories that must be addressed in the upcoming years. They are the critical few areas where priorities should be directed. Typically, well-chosen KRAs serve as umbrellas that cover any functions managers must address. Because they are broad, the chance are that they will also remain the same for more than one year. KRAs are usually one- or two-word descriptive labels.
For its first two years, one department worked with the KRAs of education, support, consulting, and documentation. The following year, it worked with the same KRAs as the information management division to which it reported: planning and budgeting; research and development; productivity; and personnel. It could still cover many of the traditional areas of the mission (e.g., support and education), but under the new, more encompassing KRAs of the division. Some other examples of KRAs might be: office automation, information delivery, customer service, client relationships, technical architecture, cost efficiencies, communication (internal and external), and general administration.
When identifying KRAs, managers should keep the following points in mind:
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