©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Strategy and Planning w Nancy Truitt Pierce w TELA Spring 2009

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Objectives w Discuss Strategic Thinking w Review the steps of Strategic Planning w Develop some answers to the questions

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Strategic Thinking w Everyone wants it w What is it? w How do you do it?

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Strategic Thinking From Wikipedia: to seek innovation and imagine new and very different futures that may lead the company to redefine its core strategies and even its industry.

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Strategic Thinking From NTP: A big picture look outside the boundaries of your organization to include the system it sits within, it’s history and competencies and consider needs and opportunities based on that larger system.

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Competencies of Strategic Thinking From Liedtka: w Systems perspective w Intent Focused w Thinking in Time w Hypothesis Driven w Intelligent Opportunism

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Strategic Thinking w What other competencies from the reading? w What makes sense to you? w How can you apply this to your department? Adobe Case Study

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Strategic Planning w What it is w Internal and External w How to do it w The key questions w The Sweet Spot Model

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Vision Key Strategies Goals Work Plans Integrated Planning External Internal

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Internal Vision w It’s about Organization and Team w Driven by Values and Principles w To execute on the business plan w Very inclusive process w Drives the Culture & Capability

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, External Vision w It’s about product, market & positioning w Multi-dimensional problem w Driven by the stage w Very closely held process w Requires strategic thinking that not everyone can do

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, The Key Questions w What business you are in w What is changing around you w Who you serve, in order of priority w What they want - now and in the future w Who or what you compete with w How they differentiate themselves

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, The Key Questions w What core competence you have w What drives your business w What you don’t do w Which you do offer w Why on all of the above w How you will do it

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Looking for the Sweet Spot Customer Needs The Business We Are In Our Competitors Our Capabilities The Sweet Spot The Future

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Real Time Strategy w Bring in what you are learning from the Market w Ask the questions again and again w It’s normal to adapt your strategy several times in the stages of growth w “Live, Learn and Launch!” Fred Wright, CEO, Who’s Calling

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Iterate, Iterate, Iterate w Keep turning the pieces around w Look at them from all sides w See how the second changes the first and third w Look for new insights Which we will start today

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, What Business Are you In? w The first question. w It defines the pyramid w It influences all other decisions w Some Examples Fire department PUD w How to think about it for IT?

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Who are the customer? w Who are they? w What do they want? w What pain do you ease? w In what order of Priority? With Feedback from the Customers (how do you get feedback?)

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Trends w What trends may impact us? w What trends may impact our customers? w What changes are we anticipating?

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Who or What is the Competition w Who do we compete against? w What do we compete against?

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, What are our Competencies? w What are we getting good at Knowledge Skills Abilities Connections Insights w And what’s growing as we speak!

©Woods Creek Consulting Company, Scenarios to Consider w Criteria for Scenarios Leverage us well Builds core disciplines Meets a clear need in the market w A few to consider w Pros and Cons of Each