Richard Lannon

Recently I was reminded of the importance of having a Vision and Mission statement for your organization. Especially when it comes to planning the future of your company in some we call a strategic plan. In my book (SET for Success: a roadmap to transform your business), I dedicated a section in Part Three called ‘Know Where You Want to Go’ to help you. The first chapter in this section is focused on creating your vision and mission statement. The following is from my book on creating your vision and mission statement.

The Foundation to Every Business: Know Where You are Going

At some point every organization should consider what they are about and where they are going. In the business world this is called having a vision and mission. Vision and mission are at the foundation of good planning. Not only do they tie directly into your strategic next steps, they anchor your decision making by providing a sense of purpose and direction.

Related Article: 11 Steps To Strategic Analysis, Planning And Implementation Success

What if your stakeholders, either internal or external, couldn’t articulate what your organization or business is all about? This would have a negative impact on your business, as no one would be able to communicate your overall purpose, either to themselves or to others. Without a clear vision and mission, people will not know what to focus on. Vision and mission provide clarity of purpose and can transform the way people see your organization. A vision and mission should be something that stirs the emotions, is universally understood, and makes people willing to share it with others.

Apply an Approach to Create Your Vision Statement (future focused)

There are many approaches to creating a vision statement that is future focused. I have used the following approach many times with great success.

Imagine that you’re reading a newspaper five years from now and that the front pages of Global Mail, theNational Post, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journalhave big news about your company.  Imagine that this is the best possible news you could ever read. Write down the headline of the story and the main points of the story.  Make sure you include the critical decisions the company has made in the past ten years to reach this point. (Don’t worry; you can always change the time frame.)

Consider these questions:

• What does the article highlight about your organization?
• What does it say about the uniqueness about your organization?
• What services does it report that you are providing?
• What does it tell you about how you’re changed in the past five years?
• What is the recognizable condition you would hope to have in place in the next five years?

Change any time frames or items that help you build on these ideas.

Steps You Can Take to Create a Mission (purpose focused)

How to create a mission statement that has both life and vitality? One way is hold a brainstorming session centered on the following questions:

1. Who are we? (Focusing on internal relationships)
2. Whom do we serve?  (I.e. who are our stakeholders?)
3. What do we do? (I.e. what business are we in?)
4. How do we do it? (What are the values by which we operate?)

Next, turn the answers to these questions into a mission statement that anchors your organization or project. Your people can and should be able to do this, and having them do so will both help them have a sense of being connected, as well as breathe life into what you and your organization is all about.

Know the Reasons Why

Establish a Culture:  This should speak for itself. Unfortunately that is not always the case. What you say you are about, where you want to go and the way you walk that talk connects people and builds community and your business culture. A mission statement is about purpose. People need to be connected with purpose. So create a purpose.

Guiding Decision Making: A properly crafted vision and mission helps in decision making, especially if the culture walks the talk. For example, it makes more sense to select a vendor to work with who aligns with your vision and mission than one that does not. This thinking can also apply to project decision making. It would be inappropriate for managers to make decisions that did not align with the organizations purpose and future direction.

Leading Performance: People and performance are negatively impacted when companies do not have a vision or mission statement. You vision and mission should be part of your performance management program. It helps to standardize programs for hiring, compensating, and training people.

Rowing in the Same Direction: The senior management team must agree on the purpose of the organization and its direction. This is accomplished through having the best vision and mission statement that they can work together to succeed. The management team plays a vital role in walking the talk and encouraging people to be part of the team rowing in the same direction. For vision and mission truly to work, everyone needs to be fully on board. If they aren’t, then dock the boat and let them get off.

Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last Share on X

Don’t Kid Yourself, This Isn’t Easy

I have watch business leaders and teams make all sorts of mistakes when it comes to creating vision and mission statements for their organizations. Some of those mistakes include:

• A president of a company deciding to use the vision and mission of another company and altering the words a little so they could use it. Think about what that says about the company and to the employees.
• Another president engaged his people in creating a vision and mission for the organization but when it was done, he said, “I don’t get it” and put up his own statement instead. This company had a lot of staff turnover and are not in business today.
• Using corp-speak to present the companies vision and mission. Corp-speak are the language you use in your business not any other person in every day life uses. The best written vision and mission statements are written for your audience. Not for you.
• Business leaders underestimating the time it takes to properly develop a well crafted vision and mission statement that people can get behind and support. Sometimes you get lucky and your vision and mission comes fast but for most organizations this is not the case. This makes sense, since what we are talking about is purpose and direction.
• Not allowing teams to create aligning statements as a way to connect and support the overarching vision and mission. One approach to creating linkage is allowing departments and teams to create connecting vision and mission statements. For example, when the organization’s statement is complete teams hold their own meeting and answer the same questions for vision and mission with the idea that they write a short statement that connects with the organizations statement. If done properly teams and individuals see how they fit in. This creates alignment and can be used for other purposes.

Final Thoughts

It’s very difficult to plan the success of other parts of your business without clarity of mission (what you are all about) and vision (what it is you want to achieve). There are many impacts, positive and negative. The reality is you would not be where you are without foresight and a sense of purpose. As business leaders and senior management, it is imperative that you ensure you have clarity of purpose and foresight, that you live it, and that you communicate it to your stakeholders. A properly developed vision and mission statement provides a bases for communications with your audience is the best possible way. The most important thing, everyone needs to understand it, embrace it and be on the bus going in the same direction.

Do your best, Invest in the success of others, Make your journey count. Richard. 

Strategic analysis, planning, and management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by a company’s top management on behalf of the organization. It is based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization competes.

To be strategic means to provide overall direction to the enterprise and involves specifying the organization’s objectives, developing policies and plans designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. All of this needs to be analyzed and the requirements clearly defined.

I think this gets missed by organizations when they are seeking to have their strategic plans translated into requirement reality.

Related Article: 7 Steps To Kick-Start Your Strategic Planning Process

Imperative to implementation success is a proven approach to developing your strategy, management, and transformation needs. This must be in alignment with the strategic business analyst needs for current and future state understanding, assessing the risks components and defining the change strategy to make it all happen. But strategy all starts with knowing the steps you need to take.

Here Are 11 Steps That Are Imperative To Your Strategic Analysis, Planning, And Implementation Success.

1. Select The Planning Model And Approach You Will Use.

This is imperative. I have witnessed many situations where the model and approach were never defined or were highly theoretical negatively impacting the stakeholder’s comprehension and participation willingness. Don’t make this mistake.

2. Identify Your Key Stakeholders.

Proper stakeholder analysis is a must whether you are facilitating strategic planning sessions or reviewing and analyzing presented plans to determine their viability or build business cases for better business decisions.

3. Establish The Questions You Need To Be Answered.

There are at least seven key questions that must be asked and answered (see Question Everything About Your Business – 7 Candid Questions That Need To Be Asked), but that is not all. Find out what the outcome requirements are and host a ‘Questions to Ask’ session with your team to create a list of the questions you need to be answered. Categorize those questions by business impact and importance and identify the stakeholder source.

4. Determine Where It Is You And Your Team Need To Go.

This is all about your company’s ‘Vision of Success.’ It includes key strategic business information of vision and mission, values and guiding principles, and goals and objectives. This information should not be fluff. As a strategic business analyst, you need to know what is on the strategic agenda (goals and objectives) and why. Then you need to help translate that into tactical requirements (if you were not part of the initial planning). This is one place where you bridge the gap from the strategic to the tactical.

5. Focus On The Business Impact Zones.

I have spoken about this for years, written articles about it and a book on the topic. Still, it amazes me that organizations and professionals (I mean business analysts) miss this point. There are generally four business impact zones (process and productivity, tools and technology, business development, and people and culture) with very specific requirements. Each impact zone affects the others through the decision-making process and actions taken. If you push on one you create ripples that impact the others. For example, recently a professional service company was forced to let go 120 of its employees. Externally the market changed (external) and the organization did not adjust quickly enough (internal), revenue declined (business development) and they were forced to let people go (people and culture) and adjust their working parameters (process and productivity) and renegotiate contracts on their working assets (tools and technology) to decrease costs.

6. Create A Strategy Map Outlining Focus Areas.

Business leaders and teams lose focus, often caused by an external event (market shift, lost client) or people challenges (poor management, lack of communications, not asking the right questions, no alignment). A strategy map provides a visual of the key decisions and focus areas and is an important business artifact for the business analyst. As business requirements go, a strategy map can be translated strategically, tactically and operationally.

Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions - Henry Mintzberg Share on X

7. Build An Action Roadmap To Guide Your Business.

A strategy roadmap is a high-level implementation plan that displays the strategic agenda (goals and objectives), the strategic initiatives (programs), the business champion (the leader or sponsor), the work elements (projects), an alignment path (to keep things aligned), and time and milestone requirements. The best part is it can be a Gantt chart that can be translated and implemented.

8. Establish Work Plans With Key Activities.

This is another one of those steps that organizations and senior teams skip because they say they do not have time to do it. Then they wonder why no one is focused on what needs to be done. Simple rule, you don’t work-plan to fail, you fail to work-plan. Can you imagine what would happen if you hired a company to build you a new house and there were not work-plans from the drawings that were created? If the strategy and roadmap are the blueprints, then the work-plans are the tasks and activities, the resources, timelines and costs of making it happen with someone in charge of implementation. Still, someone needs to establish the work-plans solution requirements.

9. Identify The Risks Through Risk Analysis.

There is always risk and if you are going to have work-plans to implement the strategic initiatives, then you need to do risk analysis. The level at which you do your risk analysis will be dependent on your role. You will need the standard inputs – objectives, risk results, external and internal influences, future state solution value and requirements priority. There are a lot of factors that play into risk analysis.

10. Create A Communication Plan To Engage People.

This is another activity that is often skilled or misunderstood, or there is a communication plan but no one has communicated that it exists and someone else starts to create a new one. There should be a strategic communication plan for the organization that gets translated into tactical and operational requirements. The communication plan is used in transformations, change and implementation.

11. Go The Distance Through Implementation.

You have gone through the strategic planning and analysis process using a proven approach, and you have created all the supporting requirements, but nothing is going anywhere. This is one of those things that sometimes happens. You need to put a process in place to make things happen whether it is through quarterly reviews, metric dashboards, timeline reviews and status meetings, progress audits and touch points, next level work-plans and resource assignments, communication implementation – the list goes on. The strategic business analyst can have an important role to play in this as does the project manager.

At the senior levels, I have been asked to facilitate ‘Go the Distance’ meetings with the executive teams to help keep them on track and do point audits with project and operational managers who have been tasked with getting things done with report backs to the executives. I guess this is a career development thing for the junior and intermediate business analyst. Still, you need to support the strategic implementation of the key strategic initiatives in the organization.

Final Thoughts

There are many steps to be taken in the strategic business analysis world to shape the direction of an organization. Over the course of my career, I have been privileged to have worked on initiatives that have allowed me to explore each step stated here both horizontally (mile wide, inch deep) and vertically (inch wide, mile deep). It takes a lot of work to define and action an organization’s direction. Unfortunately, the amount of effort is often misunderstood or put aside for bandage solutions. No matter the circumstance strategic business analysis, planning and implementation is important to the success of any organization. Good luck.

Recently, in a conversation with an executive from the resource industry, I was told strategy was a bad word, just like the word transformation.

There was now an underpinning feeling if the company had not transformed yet, it never would. I found that interesting, as transformation in the strategic business analysis world is a requirement word that also means change and implementation requirements.

Where the business wants to focus is on execution, implementation, and integration. That makes sense as there are many companies with great strategic plans but fail to implement them.

Related Article: 9 Steps to Take You From Strategic Plan to Implementation

One Fortune report suggested 9 out of 10 organizations fail to implement their strategic plans successfully. Another Tech Company report stated 50% of all Tech companies and departments don’t have a strategic plan.

It is difficult to implement if you don’t know where you want to go.

Here’s the thing; strategy, execution, implementation, and integration are all connected. If strategy is coming from the top, then someone needs to translate it into realistic, viable, actionable plans. And someone else needs to execute on it successfully. So I contacted my friend and business associate, Bill Hanniman of Hanniman Recruiting Group Inc (IT recruitment boutique successfully on top of the emerging trends for BA and PM resources) and asked what’s up.

According to Bill, “to address the implementation challenges, organizations are seeking business integration specialists, project execution specialists/analysts, project managers and program managers.”

Related Article: 3 Requirement Categories to use in Strategic Planning and Business Analysis

So I guess this provides some career opportunities across the organization landscape. In walks the strategic business analyst, business analyst, senior project manager and/or senior program manager and like professional rescuers (investigators, police officers, firefighters, medics, teachers, etc.) they become the unsung hero of the business world. They are the people who make a substantive yet unrecognized contribution; whose bravery is unknown or unacknowledged as they set forth to execute and implement the strategic objectives in an ever-changing corporate landscape. What do they do?

Strategic Business Analysts

Strategic business analysts identify business needs and solutions within the context of the overall direction of a company. They develop and implement critical business solutions through information gathering, synthesis, review, and testing. They secure and allocate resources, manage implementation schedules, and facilitate meetings.

Strategic business analysts are commonly part of the IT field and usually work in the financial, banking, computer, or IT industries. A strategic business analyst’s projects can involve software development and acquisition, systems development, and process management.1

Related Article: 6 Ways the Business Analyst Is Like a Consultant

Senior/Project Manager

Project management involves setting project goals, establishing tasks and a timeline for completion by assigned parties, evaluating progress and making adjustments as needed to ensure that clients, internal or external, achieve their desired results. Project managers often work in the computer systems or information technology industries, although they can find employment in almost any industry. They coordinate project activities, budgets, personnel and work with other departments to meet deadlines and project goals within set resources and under firm deadlines.2

Business Integration Specialists

A systems integrator is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a practice known as system integration. Systems integrators may work in many fields, but the term is generally used in the information technology (IT) field, the defense industry, or in media.3

After discussing these roles and responsibilities in what I call a ‘did you know session,’I asked Bill what happened to change management as it relates to the corporate organization and these careers. He told me, “culture change management is also an essential component that needs to be embedded from the project launch and all resources (technical and functional) need to understand what this means and how their role plays a part of it all. The last 5% is what executives often talk about. That’s where the actual ROI is achieved.”

You are not your resume, you are your work. Seth Godin Share on X

Achieving that last 5% return on investment has always been a challenge, whether you are talking about today or project from 20 years ago. I don’t believe that has changed much. But as a professional, if you know your path is one of execution, implementation, and integration then you can focus on helping the business realize their goals and objectives.

Final Thoughts

All of these positions swirl around one another in some interchangeable role and responsibility dance. The fact is they are all about the execution, implementation, and integration timeline where realizing ROI is the key measurement of success, especially on large enterprise initiatives like SAP or some other large scale project. Those who succeed get to live another day and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Coaching Opportunity for You: S.E.T. Executive & Professional Coaching

There is a buzz of opportunities in some organizations where teams are being gathered to execute on the strategic agenda. This requires a cross-section of expertise that lends itself well to the professional with business analysis, project management, and system integration experience. I hope this blog provided you some “did you know” insight.

Do your best, Invest in the success of others, Make your journey count. Richard

Article References

1 “Career Definition for Strategic Business Analysts.” Study.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.
2 “Project Manager Job Description.” Study.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.
3 “Systems Integrator.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.

It is all about Peaks, Valleys and Detours

I am privileged to be able to meet with business leaders, their teams and professionals. I regularly hear about the peaks, valleys and detours (otherwise known as the good, the bad and the unexpected) that take place on the road to success. Whatever the stories, the top three things business leaders and their teams say when they experience challenges are: I’m stuck; I’ve lost focus; I lack direction.

I’m Stuck

A business leader in the technology industry recently confided that they felt stuck in their business. Their metaphor, being trapped in a box with all the flaps tightly closed and no way out. They then paused and said they’d never expressed it that way before and that the honesty felt good. It was a moment of truth.

Feeling stuck in your business is not unusual, especially when there is so much going on—so many decisions to be made. It’s normal. Sometimes a business has too much opportunity or not enough. Perhaps your company is experiencing rapid growth and things are changing too quickly, or maybe you are over extended with too much risk. Maybe your personnel turnover is too high. Or the external market has changed around you. You could even be suffering from poor leadership, management or resource capabilities.

Related Article: 7 Steps to Kick-Start Your Strategic Planning Process

The important thing is what you do about it—how you move forward, the actions you take to get unstuck. The key is to look at the sense of being stuck as a business opportunity.

I’ve Lost Focus

Another thing that often happens when challenges set in is that we lose our focus. It happens to the best of us. From the time we’re kids and into adulthood we’re told we need to focus if we want to be successful, but we’re rarely told what “to focus” actually means or how to achieve it. I believe that it isn’t until we lose something of importance that we truly understand what focus means. That is a powerful insight.

I was asked to facilitate a strategic planning process for a company in the transportation industry over a six month period. My job was to help them understand what they needed to focus on for their business to reach the next level. As part of that process I always do pre-work, which in this case was having one-to-one private meetings with the senior management team and the company representatives.

In one such meeting, the president revealed that his company had just lost a large contract, one that amounted to nearly a third of their revenue. What’s more, he didn’t know why. He felt as if he’d really lost focus in his business. The state of having a clear visual definition of his business was missing, and he hadn’t been paying enough attention to the core of his business and that client in particular. He’d taken the contract for granted and allowed himself and his team to get distracted by other things when they should have been focusing on ensuring that one of their largest accounts was maintained and grown. That loss really shook the company. They weren’t sure what they were going to do, how to make up this major loss. In this case the president decided to bring his team together, senior managers and professional team members to discuss the issue, look at the reality, make some tough decisions, and work towards rectifying the situation with a changed market and organic growth emphasis. This did mean growth through strategic acquisition and the redevelopment of components of their management team. It took two years to regain the original loss through establishing a new focus.

I Lack Direction

Another client, an oil and gas service company had experienced rapid growth. They’d started out in the president’s home and ten years later they numbered over 150 people. Their expansion happened so quickly, in fact, that they’d had no time to standardize their processes. People felt as if they were tripping over one another and no one was clear where the business was going. So much opportunity happening so fast resulted in creating an unstable business environment and a lack of clarity. They needed a direction.

Related Information: Building a Strategic and Implementation Plan for Your Business

As the president and I worked together, we decided to engage a representative team from the organization to help identify the issues and find ways to rectify their challenges. We used an approach that provided clear boundaries, one that created a clear picture of their present situation and their preferred future state. This, in turn, provided much needed clarity. Afterwards, the team was able to identify that which they could realistically do to make concrete improvements in their organization. An action plan was developed to help the organization make the adjustments needed to move forward.

My dad, a successful entrepreneur, used to tell me when I was a boy, whatever you can conceive you can achieve. If you can see it in your mind, you can make it happen.Clarity is determining exactly what results you want to achieve, when you want to achieve them, and taking action to make it happen.

The successful warrior is the average person, with laser-like focus. Bruce Lee Share on X

Final Thoughts

This blog post is a bit of a cheat as it is an edited excerpt from my book, S.E.T. for Success, a roadmap to transform your business. I felt inclined to share this section of my book because these three issues recently showed themselves with another client I have worked with and we needed to figure out what they were going to do. In each one of these cases we had to apply an approach to define the problem, find solutions, leverage opportunities, create a plan and implement.

I think that no matter where you are in your business or in what way you plan to move forward, it is important that you have an approach to follow. This will help you add discipline to your planning endeavours and make it easier for you and your people to successfully follow through. With the right approach and model in place, you’ll find your leadership team able to make much better business decisions, your business able to move forward, and your people able to produce concrete, measureable results.

I believe it is important you take a structured approach and engage people to transform your business through addressing issues, creating a strategy and a roadmap, and implementation plan that can be executed on by organization. If anything to get everyone going in the same direction.