Strategic Planning Series Webinar Recordings

 

I want to thank everyone who joined us for our Strategic Planning Webinar Series.  If you missed the opportunity to participate live, here is your chance to view these recordings.  These webinars contain important and helpful information to remember as you finalize your Strategic Planning journey for 2015.

We are busy putting together some new webinars that you will not want to miss.  These can help you take your organization to the next level.  I am currently planning for late January or early February.  Watch our blogs and newsletter for more information. To sign up just enter your email in the box on the left hand margin.  Also, please send me an email with any suggestions you might have for both blog and webinar topics. Let us know what your specific challenges are and I will try to accommodate as many requests as possible.

Below you will find links to MDS’ recent Webinar Series on Strategic Planning, both Parts I & II.  The images are linked to the MDS YouTube page, so just click on the image of the webinar that you want to view and it will open up the presentation video in a new window for you.

Part I Part II

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roy Barker is Director of Special Projects at Moore Diversified Services, a Fort-Worth, Texas-based organization specializing in operations analysis, marketing development, and investment advisory services. Roy is an authority in the field of employee turnover analysis and retention strategies.

Strategic Planning Webinar

Moore Diversified Services presents Plug-In and Prosper Webinars:

A STRATEGIC PLANNING SERIES
Part 1 – Where Do I Start?
Thursday, Nov. 6
1:00-1:30 p.m. (CST)

 

At Moore Diversified Services your success is our goal. We are committed to equipping our clients with tools and strategies to make their businesses successful. As we close out fiscal 2014 and approach 2015, MDS would like to offer a special, COMPLIMENTARY webinar series on Strategic Planning.     Plug in with copyright

Join Roy Barker, Director – Special Projects at MDS, for “Part 1 – Strategic Planning: Where Do I Start?” as he answers this question and provides insights into strategy planning.   Topics will include:

  • Selecting a team
  • Employee Buy-In
  • SWOT Analysis
  • Data Driven Indicators
    • Operations
    • Marketing
    • Employee Turn-Over

Space is limited. Don’t miss out on this special opportunity to learn from a company with over 40 years of experience.  Click here to view webinar flyer

REGISTER TODAY!

Conduct a S.W.O.T. Analysis Before You Need a S.W.A.T. Team!

You have the ability to take your business wherever you can imagine. The first step in any journey is planning. The old mantra goes, plan your work and work your plan. Those are great keys to success. Develop a plan and then focus and stick to it. Not that it won’t need tweaking and adjusting along the way, but as long as you can stay focused and true to your mission and goals, you can accomplish anything in life and in business.

The first part of planning any journey is to decide where you’re at currently. I was raised back in the day of paper maps. Every summer my grandparents would take us on vacation and I would be the navigator. About a week before we left my grandfather would sit down with me and a map and we would not only map out our primary route but we would also have a secondary route as well. The very first step of this process every year would be pointing to the reference of Fort Worth, Texas on the map and he would say “this is where were starting from”.

Current Location                                                 

It’s the same way with business. You have to know where you’re at before you can develop a great plan leading to your desired goals. That is the beauty of the S.W.O.T. analysis or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis. It’s a great process to perform in order to start the planning process and create your roadmap or strategic plan for success. This analysis works well for evaluation of products, departments, strategies, or an entire company.

The first part of the analysis, the S.W. (or strengths and weaknesses) portion, is an internal view of the product, department, or company. You are looking for and listing strengths and weaknesses of the target you’re evaluating. It can vary depending upon what you’re evaluating, but here are a few examples.

Strengths could include:

  • What does your organization do best?
  • What’s unique about you product, staff, company, or etc.
  • To what resources do you have access?

Weaknesses could include:

  • Employees not trained
  • Substandard customer service
  • Sales process too complicated

The second part of the analysis, or the O.T. are the opportunities and threats you see, which is a view of the external. These are the opportunities and threats created by or posed by outside forces to your product, department, company or whatever you are evaluating. Again, this will depend upon what you’re evaluating, but here are a few examples.

Opportunities could include:

  • New trends
  • New markets
  • Organic growth possibilities

Threats could include:

  • Existing competition
  • New competition
  • Competitors’ use of new technology

Planning Tool

While this was a very condensed overview of a S.W.O.T. analysis, you can see the value in performing one before beginning your strategic planning for 2015. It is also important to get buy-in for those who will be participating. It is advised to reach outside of your executive team and chose employees to participate from different departments and levels in the company. To ensure open and honest dialogue, employees will need to feel the environment is safe and they may speak freely.

Schedule a series of meetings over the course of a few weeks instead of one long session. This will help keep everyone focused on the task at hand and not worrying about day to day activities. Make sure there are no cell phones and only interruptions for true emergencies.

Keeping the sessions positive is a MUST. Even though you may uncover some things in which you were unaware or are troubling, look at this as an opportunity. Had you not conducted the S.W.O.T. analysis you might not have discovered challenges until it was too late. Draw on the message in my last blog about balance, when things seem out of control, there are still opportunities to be had.

I would enjoy working with you and your professional team to help you conduct both a S.W.O.T. analysis and a business wellness checkup, as well as moderating your strategic planning sessions. These two tools will be a great way to kick off and jump start your 2015 strategic planning process.

 

Roy Barker is Director of Special Projects at Moore Diversified Services, a Fort-Worth, Texas-based organization specializing in operations analysis, marketing development, and investment advisory services. Roy is an authority in the field of employee turnover analysis and retention strategies.

Where Has 2014 Gone?

By Roy Barker

I woke up this morning like any normal morning. Stumbled to the coffee pot, ran out and got the paper (yes I still have one thrown), checked some emails as I looked out the window at another beautiful sunny 81 degree morning. For those of you that have not spent a lot of time in Texas, any August morning below 90 degrees is a winner!

So I’m looking at my schedule wondering how it got so messed up that I’m in Texas during this time of year and not enjoying the beautiful Massachusetts coast right now, but that’s another discussion. As I am contemplating this dilemma, I get a calendar tickler about setting some January 2015 communication goals. Really! 2015! Where has 2014 gone?   It was just last week I was relating how there is still time to make changes, which can have a positive effect by the end of 2014. Now I am writing to say, oh by the way, we also need to start thinking about 2015, if not NOW, at least very shortly.

So let’s talk a little about planning for 2015. Strategic Planning can eliminate stress and surprises by setting clearly defined goals for your company and/or community and communicating them to your employees. It can ignite creativity with your staff and stoke efforts for positive changes.

It’s beneficial to create a sound plan so you can allocate your resources, both financial and human, to accomplish your main goals. Strategic Planning can provide a guidepost to measure progress and indicate where changes need to be made. With everyone on the same organized page, you can expect to see goals accomplished, greater productivity, and a happier workforce.

Here are a couple things you will need to keep in mind while getting ready to start your Strategic Planning process.

  • You will need to perform a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats). There is a lot of documentation out there on this process. Remember the Strengths and Weakness are internal and the Opportunities and Threats are external. I think this is such a great opportunity for every company to really see who they are and where they are at today. You have to know where you are in order to find the most appropriate path to where you want to be.
  • Involve your team. This should be a combination of those from your management team, positive and creative individuals within your company, and leaders in the workforce. Start early enough to where you can poll all employees with a problem solution proposition. It’s important to find out what road blocks front line employees are encountering in providing excellent customer service. It’s important to get employee buy-in to changes that need to be made.
  • Strategic planning is not a onetime event. Have a few shorter meetings rather than trying to cram everything into a onetime event. This will help reduce interruptions and also give those involved time to really think about the items in play and how best to proceed.
  • Start early. Give yourself and your team time. I know there are some of you that already have this on the calendar for December 31st at 3pm. While I applaud you for your forward thinking, you may want to build in a little more of a time cushion. Give your team time to prepare, send out some general topics for them to start reflecting on.
  • No interruptions. This is another good reason why scheduling a few shorter sessions is better than one long one. Make sure phones are off and subordinates are aware that there are to be no interruptions except for true emergencies. I will go out on a limb here and say that NO, a change in tee time, while disturbing, should not be considered as a true emergency. To help combat normal business interruptions it is recommended holding these meetings at an off-site location
  • Don’t let this turn into a gripe session. This is most important for the functionality of the time committed but also the attitude the group takes on going forward. This is not the time to talk about the water cooler that is warm or replacing a worn out printer. Those are normal maintenance issues that already have a channel for resolution. While we have to talk about what we want to change and why, focus on positive. What can we accomplish? What are our solution options?
  • Cost of solutions/changes. We must take into account the cost of changes or solutions to issues. It is important to have someone with knowledge of your company’s actual budget on the strategic planning team. Are making the changes realistic? Can you find the money to do it? While you may have to push the budget envelop in order to get real changes made, it is always better to be able to plan within your budget parameters. This also gets back to starting early. If you do have some costly items to address, it gives you and your team time to incorporate them into the 2015 budget.
  • Work with a knowledgeable facilitator. It’s always good to have someone from the outside present in these meetings. It’s an even bigger benefit to have a facilitator that is familiar with the industry as well as strategic planning. A good facilitator will help keep the meetings moving and productive, keep the group on task, and provide insight into the process where necessary, and be the impartial voice of reason where cooler heads prevail if/when discussions get heated.
  • Make the process fun! I know this can be difficult, but it is important to get everyone to rally behind the fact change will be good. This should be a light air of collaboration. Even though there may be some hierarchical challenges in the room, it’s imperative to rid this process of intimidation if you want the best ideas and eventual buy-in.
  • Buy-in at the top. You can’t fake this. Well you can, but it’s very easy to spot someone going through the motions that is not completely sold on the process or its results. Give your staff credit, they are smart enough to know the difference and they don’t even have to be on the same campus as you. Believe me when I tell you, it will show through many, many miles away.

I know it may seem crazy to start thinking about 2015 while we’re still in the Dog Days of Summer, but it will be here before you know it. School will be starting soon and then we will be into the Holiday Season before we know it. Give some thought as to who in your organization would be a positive influence on this process. What are some things you would like to see changed? More importantly, what are some things your prospects, customers, clients, resident, vendors, staff, and partners want to see changed? If you don’t know what these are, now would be a great time to conduct surveys or focus groups to find out.

Don’t wait much longer to get the process of Strategic Planning for 2015 underway! Give me a call and let’s put MDS’ 40+ years of experience to work for you and your team mapping out a great plan for 2015!