“Strategic” Planning Perspectives

1. “Strategic” Planning Perspectives Thoughts from Experience in the Fisher College of Business Steve Mangum October 2007

2. Selected Planning Considerations (current FCOB status) • From Scratch or Revision (continuous revision) • Grassroots or Leadership Centric (leadership team centric with faculty endorsement) • Degree of Buy-in (buy in: yes, fixation: no) • Timeframe (short) • Degree of Specificity (directional) • “Strategic”? (sub-strategic) • Operational Planning or Branding/Positioning (planning)

3. Context: In FCOB planning is… • college level rather than department focus • primarily driven by academic program considerations • supported by other pieces of our “organizational architecture” • faculty staffing model drives faculty size and distribution decisions • workload policy (e.g. differential teaching loads; college wide performance management system) • full cost model (net revenues and costs associated with different product lines known) • continuous rather than episodic • Updating every three years; more frequent re-examination of resource needs assessment

4. 1990-1992: “Creation” of the Agenda for Action • Multi-year; full scale planning effort • Multiple “blue ribbon” committees • All faculty members involved on one or more committees • External members and student representatives • Extensive surveying and focus groups with internal and external stakeholders • Multiple retreats • Iterative process with steering committee in the lead

5. Sample Critical Questions Guiding Effort • Who is our customer? • Who are our competitors? • What disruptive business models threaten the existing landscape? • What disruptive technologies are likely to emerge? • Who are our stakeholders and what do they expect of us? • Who are we (e.g. what capabilities do we have that are valuable, potentially relatively rare and not easily copied and may therefore be a potential source of sustainable competitive advantage)?

6. FCOB continuous planning process • Review of existing “Agenda for Action,” input to college Executive Committee (EC) • Ditto on identification of potential opportunities and threats • EC and Dean’s office sets agenda for leadership retreat • New initiatives, proposed changes, resource requirement estimates emerge from retreat • “Plan” aired with full faculty via department and college faculty meetings and with Dean’s external advisory council • “Plan” endorsed and set in motion

7. Current FCOB Planning Focus • Mission, Vision and Values • Broad Goals • Explicit Initiatives/Tactics • Performance Measures • Specified Resource Needs Plan

8. FCOB “Lessons” • Once mission, vision, values in place, even if not perfect, do not revisit frequently. • Consistency of message and approach important…power in established pattern • Constant communication: takes more than plaques at elevator doors and mission laden mouse pads. • Annual review/updating helps keep it “alive” • Plan plus other “org. architectural” pieces forms basis for assessing alternatives (e.g. which program?, incremental faculty needs, STEM opportunities,…)

9. The Future Challenge for us all? • “Sometime over the next decade your [organization] will be challenged to change in a way for which it has no precedent.” • “Over the years it’s become increasingly clear to me that organizations do not have innovation DNA. They don’t have adaptability DNA. This realization inevitably led me back to a fundamental question: what problem was management invented to solve, any way?” (strategy expert Gary Hamel)

10. Future Challenge (cont.) • “Against the backdrop of the digital age’s dramatic technological change, ongoing globalization, and the declining predictability of strategic planning models, only new approaches to managing employees and organizing talent to maximize wealth creation will provide [organizations] with a durable competitive advantage.” The McKinsey Quarterly: The Online Journal of McKinsey and Company, October 2007

11. Questions?