Introduction
After over 10 years of facilitating over 50 organizations in strategy development and strategic planning, it appears to me that the most strategic things for an organization are often not complex. This is the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) contexts that many organizations operate in, notwithstanding. The converse is actually true: the most strategic issues are often so simple that many leaders would be inclined to ignore them… Read more
Introduction
The planning process is perhaps the most strategic aspect of strategy development. This sounds so basic but my 10+ years of strategy facilitation proves that it is not. I have lost count of leaders and organizations that imagine that the Board, or the Senior Management or the Consultant can lock themselves in a room and a few hours or days voilà! come up with an effective strategy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fast? Maybe; Successful? Almost always not!… Read more
Introduction
In the my last piece, I shared my reflections on why the strategy process is more if not equally important as the product (the strategy itself). I underscored that of all the aspects to consider about the strategy development process, making it participatory is most definitive.
But just how does an organisation and its leadership make the strategy development process participatory?… Read more
Introduction
They say that there are no gains without pain. This statement is also applicable in the strategic planning process. While the benefits of making the strategic planning process participatory are immense as highlighted in the previous piece, there can and are usually awkward moments in doing so. Focusing on the benefits makes the pain bearable. Leaders and facilitators involved in the strategic planning process need to anticipate the challenges and plan on appropriate approaches to navigate them. In this article, I cover the top five C-sense challenges of making the process participatory… Read more
Introduction
Strategy development processes can be internally or externally facilitated. The word is facilitated. The role of an internal facilitator may be straightforward but this is not often the case for external facilitator, or if you like a consultant. Different organizations and leaders will have different preconceptions on the role of an external facilitator; with some assuming that the facilitator should lock themselves in a room and come out with a strategy document, others thinking that they should work out a miracle that resolves all the problems that they have all along been aware but are reluctant or are unable to solve, and yet others behaving as if it is a competition as to who between the leader and the consultant knows more and… Read more
Introduction
Strategy development is both a science and an art: both from a facilitator’s and the facilitated team’s standpoint. An effective strategy development facilitator needs to have this at the top of their mind throughout the process. While wearing the science hat, the facilitator, by being reasonably rigid, helps the team that they are guiding to see and apply the principles of good strategy development; because these are principles… Read more
Introduction
It is common knowledge that when developing a strategy, an analysis of the environment in which an organization operates is essential. Such an analysis helps identify the critical internal and external factors that the organization faces and what its strategic response should be. However, one of the most common weaknesses in strategic planning is that situation analyses often stop at description. Organizations invest significant effort in documenting trends, challenges, stakeholder expectations, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, yet fail to answer the most important question: “So what?”… Read more
Introduction
So, how do you ensure that your situational analysis actually informs strategy?
In the previous piece, I noted that many situational analyses do an excellent job of describing an organization’s operating environment but fall short of informing strategic choices. Over the years, I have found that useful situational analyses tend to have a few things in common. Regardless of the tools one uses for the situation analysis, here are the key C-Sense nuggets I propose for carrying out a useful situation analysis:… Read more
Introduction
I love the hum and buzz around New Years: the awe-striking resolutions, the zest to have the New
Year be the best year ever. The atmosphere is always filled with such hope. Waking up to a new
year is undoubtedly a blessing. Everyone loves a fresh start, whether to right the wrongs or to
continue in their exploits… Read more
Don’t you just love those moments when you learn a story about someone or something and it makes
you see it in a whole new light and suddenly you attach such sentimental value to it? We have grown
up listening to stories. It is how our parents/ caregivers explained the world to our younger selves and
for many of us we never quite forgot the lessons attached… Read more
I had a huge debate with some friends the other day. It was supposed to be one of those lunches
where you remind each other of past experiences with some sense of nostalgia. You know how
we are all prone to romanticizing the past as soon as the future begins to frighten us; that is what
we were doing on this day. Well, being Kenyans, one of the things we stumbled over in the
‘past’ was the inauguration of a new government… Read more
Relationships. One word that will get conversations going in any setting. The concept is also
anchored in a world of controversy particularly in this century; some genre being more
controversial than others. You will hardly hear disagreements about the dynamics of a parent-
child relationship, probably because by natural order, very little is left to the imagination… Read more
Barely three weeks to the national elections in Kenya, and the decline in business is notable. The
reduction of profits in many entities and in some cases the closure of entire business ventures is
announcing the forthcoming politically induced comma of the business world. This is not a new
phenomenon in Kenya; a report by Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) in 2013, just
before the general election, revealed the same thing… Read more
It’s about that time of year when everyone starts to reminisce with a sense of guilt about their
resolutions at the beginning of the year. The struggle is between bowing out and waiting for
next year to start all over and mastering all will to try and fit your goals within the last quarter.
Aside with our personal resolutions to cut back on screen time or the more universal ‘I will get
in shape this year’; where do organizations stand matters strategic plans?… Read more
Introduction
“Kenya’s economy has shown considerable resilience to the enormous shock of the pandemic, and this
year is expected to post one of the stronger growth rebounds in the region thanks to diversified sources of
growth and sound economic policies and management,” Keith Hansen, World Bank Country Director for
Kenya (Hansen, 2021 Dec)… Read more
Since the wake of 1960, strategic planning has remained prominent in corporations. The quest
has been to enhance the competitiveness of each business unit in the growing economies.
Frederick Taylor developed a philosophy in 1909 based on the belief that making people work as
hard as they could was not as efficient as optimizing the way the work was done. In his
published work “The Principles of Scientific Management” he proposes that by optimizing and
simplifying jobs, productivity would increase… Read more
