Create a Stakeholder Map

Identify and map out all relevant stakeholders, both internal and external, who have an interest in or are affected by your organization's activities. This map will help you understand their needs and concerns.A stakeholder map is a valuable tool for a leadership team to develop its long-term strategic plan in several ways:

Identifying Key Stakeholders: A stakeholder map helps in identifying all individuals, groups, or organizations that have an interest or stake in the organization's activities. By understanding who the stakeholders are, leadership can prioritize them based on their level of influence and interest in the organization's success.

Understanding Stakeholder Needs and Expectations: A stakeholder map allows leadership to categorize stakeholders based on their needs, expectations, and concerns. This understanding is crucial for aligning the strategic plan with the interests of key stakeholders, ensuring their support and buy-in for the long-term goals.

Mitigating Risks and Capitalizing on Opportunities: By mapping stakeholders, leadership can identify potential risks that may arise from stakeholder opposition or resistance to the strategic plan. Likewise, it helps in recognizing opportunities for collaboration or partnerships that can enhance the plan's success.

Building Relationships and Engagement: A stakeholder map facilitates the development of targeted communication and engagement strategies for each stakeholder group. This enables leadership to build strong relationships, foster trust, and ensure ongoing support for the strategic plan throughout its implementation.

Driving Inclusivity and Diversity: A stakeholder map encourages leadership to consider a diverse range of perspectives, ensuring that the strategic plan reflects the needs and interests of all stakeholders, including those who may be marginalized or underrepresented.

Aligning Resources and Priorities: By understanding the influence and interests of various stakeholders, leadership can allocate resources effectively and prioritize initiatives that are most critical for the organization's long-term success.

Overall, a stakeholder map serves as a visual representation of the ecosystem surrounding the organization, guiding leadership in making informed decisions and developing a strategic plan that is inclusive, sustainable, and supported by key stakeholders.

Data Analysis

• Top to bottom analysis of internal customer, product, services data to identify where value cost are created.
• Market assessment:  Truly understand size of market available, segmented by the capabilities of your business.  Assess and segment current portfolio into growth, market and commoditizing opportunities.
• Determine "Where to Play" and your short/long-term action plans.
• Simple statement of strategic intent

Internal Data Analysis - Determines Level of Complexity and Readiness To Grow

Quads and Quartiles are Statistical tools used to organize data into groups based on their distribution. They are often employed in business analysis to identify patterns, trends, and outliers within datasets. When it comes to determining the 80/20 breakout of products, services, markets, etc., these tools can be utilized in conjunction with the Pareto principle.

The Pareto principle, commonly known as the 80/20 rule, suggests that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. In business, this principle is frequently applied to identify the most significant factors contributing to outcomes. For example, 80% of a company's revenue might come from 20% of its products, or 80% of customer complaints might stem from 20% of product defects.

Here's how quad analysis and quartiles can be incorporated into this process:

Data Collection: Gather relevant data on products, services, markets, etc., including sales figures, customer feedback, market share data, etc.

Data Organization: Use quartiles to divide the data into four equal parts, each containing 25% of the observations. This helps in understanding the distribution of the data and identifying outliers.

Quad Analysis: Once the data is organized into quartiles, further analyze it by grouping products, services, markets, etc., into quadrants based on their performance metrics (such as revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, etc.). This could result in categories like "High Revenue-High Profit," "Low Revenue-High Profit," "High Revenue-Low Profit," and "Low Revenue-Low Profit."

Pareto Analysis: Apply the Pareto principle to identify the vital few (the top 20%) that contribute the most to the desired outcome (e.g., revenue, profit, customer satisfaction). This might involve focusing on the top quartile or even a smaller subset of the data.

Strategic Planning: Armed with insights from the quad analysis and Pareto analysis, organizations can make informed decisions about resource allocation, product development, market expansion, and other strategic initiatives. They can prioritize efforts on the most profitable products, lucrative markets, or high-value services while optimizing or reevaluating the underperforming ones.

Operational Planning: Use the insights gained to inform day-to-day operations, marketing strategies, sales tactics, inventory management, and customer service efforts. This ensures that operational activities are aligned with strategic objectives and focused on maximizing returns from the key drivers of success.

Overall, quad analysis and quartiles provide a structured approach to understanding the distribution of data and identifying areas of focus for strategic and operational planning, particularly in the context of the Pareto principle and the 80/20 rule

External Market Potential Data Analysis

To determine the 80/20 market segmentation potential for the growth of an organization's products and services, as well as to decide on whether to maintain or exit certain offerings within specific market segments, quad analysis and quartiles can be instrumental. Here's how they can be applied in the context of discovery planning for developing strategic and operational plans:

Data Collection: Gather comprehensive data on market segments relevant to the organization, including demographic information, purchasing behavior, market size, growth rates, and profitability metrics.

Data Organization: Utilize quartiles to divide the data on market segments into four equal parts, each representing 25% of the observations. This helps in understanding the distribution of performance across different market segments.

Quad Analysis: Once the data is organized into quartiles, conduct quad analysis to group market segments based on their growth potential, profitability, and other relevant metrics. These quadrants might include categories like "High Growth-High Profitability," "Low Growth-High Profitability," "High Growth-Low Profitability," and "Low Growth-Low Profitability."

Pareto Analysis: Apply the Pareto principle to identify the vital few (the top 20%) of market segments that contribute the most to growth and profitability. This involves focusing on the top quartile or a smaller subset of market segments that represent the most promising opportunities for growth.

Strategic Decision-Making: Based on insights from quad and Pareto analysis, make strategic decisions about which market segments to prioritize for growth, maintenance, or exit. Allocate resources towards maximizing the potential of high-growth and high-profitability market segments while considering scaling back or exiting underperforming ones.

Operational Planning: Use the findings to inform operational plans, including marketing strategies, product development initiatives, sales efforts, and resource allocation within specific market segments. Ensure that operational activities are aligned with the organization's growth objectives and are focused on optimizing returns from key market segments.

Risk Assessment: Evaluate the risks associated with maintaining or exiting specific market segments. Consider factors such as market dynamics, competitive landscape, regulatory environment, and the organization's capabilities to serve each segment effectively.

Exit Strategy Development: If it's determined that certain market segments should be exited, develop a comprehensive exit strategy that minimizes disruption to customers, mitigates any potential negative impacts on the organization's reputation, and maximizes the value of assets associated with serving those segments.

By leveraging quad analysis, quartiles, and the Pareto principle in market segmentation analysis, organizations can gain valuable insights into the growth potential of different market segments. This enables them to make informed decisions during discovery planning for strategic and operational planning, ensuring that plans are aligned with market dynamics and focused on maximizing growth opportunities while effectively managing risks and resources.

 

• Strengths: Internal factors that give the organization an advantage.
• Weaknesses: Internal factors that hinder the organization's performance.
• Opportunities: External factors that the organization could exploit.
• Threats: External factors that could pose challenges or risks.

Brainstorming:

• Facilitate a brainstorming session to generate ideas related to each aspect of the SWOT analysis.
• Encourage participants to think creatively and freely express their thoughts without judgment.
• Use techniques such as mind mapping or round-robin brainstorming to stimulate idea generation.

Affinity Diagram:

• Organize the generated ideas into groups or categories using an affinity diagram.
• Look for common themes or relationships among the ideas and group them accordingly.
• Use sticky notes or digital tools to capture and arrange ideas visually.

Categorization:

• Review the grouped ideas and assign appropriate categories or labels to each group.
• Ensure that each category represents a distinct aspect of the organization's operations, challenges, or opportunities.

Prioritization:

• Prioritize the categorized ideas based on their impact, feasibility, urgency, and alignment with the organization's goals and objectives.
• Use techniques such as dot voting, pairwise comparison, or weighted scoring to assign priority levels to each idea within each category.

Action Planning:

• Develop action plans for addressing the prioritized ideas and initiatives.
• Define specific goals, objectives, timelines, responsibilities, and resources required for each action.
• Ensure that action plans are actionable, measurable, and aligned with the organization's overall strategy and BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal).

Integration with Strategic and Operational Plans:

• Incorporate the prioritized actions and initiatives into the organization's strategic and operational plans.
• Identify how each action contributes to realizing the BHAG and supporting the broader organizational goals.
• Allocate resources, track progress, and adjust plans as needed to ensure successful implementation.

Regular Review and Monitoring:

• Establish mechanisms for regularly reviewing and monitoring progress towards implementing the action plans.
• Conduct periodic reassessments of the SWOT analysis and affinity diagram to capture new insights, adapt to changing circumstances, and refine strategic and operational priorities accordingly.

By following these steps, organizations can effectively leverage SWOT analysis, brainstorming, affinity diagrams, and prioritization techniques to identify actionable insights, align strategic and operational plans, and drive progress towards achieving their BHAG and overarching goals.

 

----------------------------

PESTLE

• Political:  This factor includes the impact of government policies, regulations, political stability, and the overall political climate on a business. It considers issues such as taxation, trade policies, government stability, and political ideologies.
• Economic: Economic factors focus on the state of the economy and its influence on business operations. This includes factors like economic growth or recession, inflation rates, exchange rates, interest rates, and overall economic stability.
• Social: Social factors examine the societal and demographic aspects that can affect a business. This category considers factors such as cultural norms, population demographics, lifestyle trends, consumer behavior, and social attitudes.
• Technological: Technological factors assess the impact of technological advancements and innovation on a business. This includes factors like technological infrastructure, research and development, automation, and the pace of technological change.
• Legal: Legal factors refer to the laws and regulations that businesses must comply with. This can include labor laws, environmental regulations, intellectual property laws, and industry-specific regulations.
• Environmental: Environmental factors focus on the ecological and sustainability aspects of business operations. This includes considerations related to environmental sustainability, climate change, resource availability, and environmental regulations.

Our approach to planning is unique

1.   A mutual understanding of your history.
2.  A stakeholder map.
3.  An up-to-date situation assessment.
4.  Defined priories.
5.  A clear purpose.
6.   An actionable plan.
7.   Improved  interpersonal team collaboration skills.
8.  Optional software tools like FocalPoint Focus, to manage, communicate and update your plan.

We will start with you, your situation, your goals, and your team.

• We guide you on a strategy journey that fights against complacency and the "same old same old" approaches to planning.
• We will push you beyond your comfort zone - so that there is continued development and learning within the the team and organization.
• You will create a new plan and set new stretch goals-the work will be succinct and documented.
• Your team will be exposed to all relevant material, they will explore different options, and they will be engaged throughout.
• You will get leverage on your efforts because you will choose your priorities strategically.
• Your team will be prepared to be accountable and empowered to execute the plan.