Strategic Planning
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CCMS helps clients achieve dramatic breakthroughs in
planning by involving the right people in intensive planning sessions that
focus on getting things done. CCMS uses three major approaches to strategic
planning:
Real Time Strategic Change
Search Conference
The choice of approach depends on the answers to two
questions:
1.
What are you trying to
accomplish?
2.
Who needs to be in the
room to make an effective plan?
Real Time Strategic Change
RTSC involves “system-wide action
planning” for a preferred future. This means an entire business unit, plant or
company can take part, including hourly workers. K.D. Dannemiller designed RTSC
for Ford Mustang in the 1970s to improve product quality. Since that time, it
has been used in many settings, including a major food producer that wanted to
improve its supply chain and South African communities seeking racial
reconciliation. For RTSC, a planning
group custom-design a planning conference that will last two to three day. Distinguishing
characteristics of RTSC include:
·
Large group capability -
design can accommodate over 2,000 people if necessary
·
Design flexibility - every
conference is custom-designed with the client
·
Potential for design around
a vision already drafted by management (vs. vision developed on-site by
participants)
·
Potential inclusion of
outside experts as presenters
·
Importance of logistics
management due to group size and design requirements
·
Follow up activities are
designed into the action planning to help assure success
Search Conference
Search Conferences enable relatively small groups
(usually 35 to 40 people) to develop a future vision and action plan in which
socio (people) and technical aspects of a system are effectively aligned. Search is based on the work of Fred Emery
and EricTrist, the Australian and British thinkers who developed the concept of
the self-directed work team in the 1950s.
Search Conferences last 2.5 or more days and follow a set agenda:
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1. Environment scan: what are the external opportunities
and threats? 2. Oral history of the organization 3. Present situation |
4.
Desired future 5.
Gaps between present and
desired future 6.
Action planning to close
gaps |
Other
distinguishing characteristics of Search Conferences include:
·
No use of external
experts. All knowledge comes from
within the system. This is most
appropriate where external data is widely known or is treated as a given.
·
Emphasis is on the search
for common ground - work on areas where there is agreement within the group
rather than trying to resolve conflicts.
·
Focus on action planning
(1/3 of time) and on taking accountability for work.
Search Conferences tend to appeal to groups whose members are highly analytical. They have been used, for example, by Microsoft to plan to new product strategies.
Future Search
Like the other two approaches, Future
Search enables a group to develop a vision and an action plan for the future. Its
primary architects were Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff. During the eighteen-hour, three-day session,
40 to 80 people follow a set agenda to review the past, explore the present,
and develop a desired future. Future
Search has also been widely used by community groups (city planning, schools,
etc.) to help diverse constituencies have focused on similarities instead of
differences. Key characteristics of Future Search are:
·
Inclusion of the
"whole system." In a
corporate environment, customers and suppliers would be represented in the
process.
·
Extensive use of creative
visual techniques that enable the group to design visible representations of
the past, present and future.
·
Emphasis on areas of agreement
for future constructive action.
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