1. An Appreciative Approach to Strategic Planning
Bob Roberts
Director of Organization Development
Chicago Region, McDonald’s
&
Jim Ludema
Professor of Organization Development
Benedictine University

2. Strategic Planning: A key process to all aspects of business growth
Determines…
Degree of Organizational Sickness or Organizational demise & death and the...
Degree of Organizational Health
Competition is getting more aggressive and bright
SP is key process toward attaining high achievement

3. Strategic Planning We need a process that can...
Have immediate impact on substantially increasing regional results
Assure we will meet or exceed the Regional 2005 Vision
Allows us to learn along the way - the most critical success factor in all strategic plan accomplishments!

4. 2005 Vision is a risk - Why?
Few if any real innovations have come from the traditional strategic planning process - name one that came out of the process versus from a high performing individual
Our Regional Manager is the catalyst for almost all meaningful innovations - retail items, store hours, DD/T; 100 days of summer; Outrageous Value Days; others -- we need innovation at all levels!

5. Strategic Planning: This process has to...
engage everyone in the region/market to plan and execute the plan
create a critical mass
Give people ‘meaningful’ goals that enlist massive levels of motivation/commitment as a system

6. Strategic Planning
Traditional Strategic Planning processes are not good for creating innovation
Does not engage the entire system in developing the system plan
Data is usually limited to the team itself rather than from the entire system
No real accountability for results from Regional Teams
No Feedback mechanisms to assess progress - no way to learn

7. Strategic Planning
We have to ‘super-charge’ this organization for increased innovation and high achievement.
The super-charge needs to result in high levels of motivation and commitment from all regional staff, store employees, and Owner Operators

8. Strategic Planning - A Proposal
Use the Appreciative Inquiry Process
Used by many companies with great success
Creates greater innovation - A Key!
Creates considerably higher levels of motivation and commitment
Focuses and builds upon what is going right or has gone right
Identifies the times when the organization was at its best

9. Appreciative Inquiry
Faster method to create new ‘bests’ for regional performance
New bests come from increasing the utilization of members best strengths & competencies
People want to build and create, not get mired down in only focusing on what is wrong or broke; individuals prefer to create greater ‘bests’
Aim is to constantly replicate the organization’s ‘bests’

10. Appreciative Inquiry
Accelerates change due to ‘critical mass’ & by engaging entire organization
Produces greater motivation & commitment
All members have broad access to information from multiple levels of people in the organization
Total organizational mindset - individuals see how their individual/team contributions fit