HBR: Four common flaws in Strategic Planning

From HBR there is a very interesting post about four common flags in strategic planning:

• "Skipping Rigorous Analysis
  Many managers believe their business experience and knowledge base alone equips them with all the information they need to conduct effective strategic planning. This belief is almost always untrue and serves only to undermine the kind of critical thinking from which truly creative strategies are born.

• Believing Strategy Can Be Built in a Day
  Yet many executive teams earnestly believe that effective strategies can be identified, explored, and agreed upon during abbreviated offsite meetings where the main driver of the agenda is the timing of snack breaks.

• Failing to Link Strategic Planning with Strategic Execution
  According to a recent survey by the Conference Board, execution overall and strategy execution in particular hold the first and second positions when it comes to "top issues" in executive's minds. It's no wonder — executing strategy requires the work of the entire organization, whereas strategic planning only requires the top team. But part of a top team's challenge in execution often stems from the failure to link their work with ongoing strategy execution.

• Dodging Strategy Review Meetings
  Strategic plans quickly become obsolete when there is no activity in place to keep them alive. Worse, managers sometimes feel freed from execution accountability when reviews are continually rescheduled or dropped from the calendar altogether."

These common flags are very important to be considered and avoided in the Strategic Design and Planning of Services phase in the service life-cycle. However, these are also relevant in the complete cycle.

Designing either ethical or disturbing services?

Today, two interesting posts (WSJ and CNET) about a new web-based service was published. These posts refer the SmartyCard service. That allows parents to reward their children when they learn different matters like math, technology and social and cultural studies among other, playing into the site.
Both post have pointed the ethical concerns. These concerns rise as you try to find the innovative side of that service. So, ethical and moral concerns must rule innovative ideas. Successful companies like "IBM and P&G are bright spots on values and ethics". Rosabeth Moss Kanter says:

"...the sense of social mission that accompanies the business mission keeps people focused on the importance of their work to solving societal problems. The resulting innovations help the companies in tough as well as easy times".

Therefore, it's not only about invent new things and make money with new efforts. The most Innovative companies must be distinguished by their Role value and their ability for "doing a nice thing once, doing it again, and doing something completely differently, again and again ..." (Scott Anthony at HBR)

Understanding consumers?

It's not new trying to understand consumer minds. A recent study reveals a interesting consumer choice mechanism. That is, a user can easier choose a product out of three:

"... when making a choice between only two, equally preferred options; subjects tended to display irritation because of the difficulty of the choice process. The presence of the third option made the choice process easier and relatively more pleasurable."

A Nielsen's study shows different consumer mindsets: “Indifferent” and ”Blinkered” Modes, "Browsing” Mode, “Buzz” Mode, and “Bargain-Activated” Mode.
These shopping modes influence buying decisions and consumer behaviors.

However, in the current Downturn the consumers "have re-focused on the essentials: “If you can’t eat it, you don’t need it.” Higher incomes have not been immune: the shopping and spending habits of all income levels have been affected by the economy" - a Nielsen's post says.
So, manufacturing "opportunities will be found by aligning with evolving consumer behaviors such as fulfilling basic over discretionary needs, trading down and a focus on value".




And, what about Services? well, services also have to be designed taking all these consumer concerns. Moreover, services have to properly connect the back-stage with the front-stage. So, services are seamlessly designed bringing the highest satisfaction and most valuable experience to the consumers. And consumers are willing to pay that experience and by "the need to have it". Service providers must be will to service excellence and consumer loyalty.



Broadeep helps companies to co-create value on their services, aiming to Consumer Loyalty. More information at http://www.broadeep.com.

Investing in IT Services for Cost Savings and Optimization

On last week, Gartner Inc. has published a press release saying that investing in IT Services represents one of the largest opportunities for Cost Savings and Optimization:

Going forward, the strategy, selection and ongoing management of IT services must become one of the top strategic imperatives for enterprises.

Also, they say:

Managing IT costs is not just about buying the hardware and software. The big spending is in the delivery of IT services to design, build, deploy and manage those assets.

Furthermore, Gartner specialists say that this year is a opportunity for CPM (Corporate Performance Management)

A series of case studies by Gartner of 16 organizations that have corporate performance management software installed showed a reduction in the number of reports -- in some cases from 1,500 to 100 and in other cases a $2.5 million cost savings realized from days reduced in the planning and reporting cycle.