Services
How I can help with:
Strategy Facilitation Process Projects Performance
I can work with your organisation to set your direction for the future and help you to ensure your processes, projects and people deliver.
All organisations, whatever their size, need to have a strategic plan.
My view is that the most important part of developing a strategic plan is bringing all key people together to discuss, debate and reach consensus on the plan for the next three to five years.
I don’t say ‘reaching consensus’ lightly as I know this stage can be quite challenging but with great facilitation and perhaps an element of compromise most teams can agree a way forward. The easy part is then recording this as a short document.
In my experience a lot of businesses don’t have a written plan, they may be able to talk freely about their ideas for the future but, if you talked to four directors in the same business, they may not say exactly the same!
As part of setting the strategic direction, three to five SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed) objectives are agreed, these will need to be reviewed annually.
The detail of what strategies or tactics are necessary to make these objectives happen usually comes later as objectives are assigned to the appropriate teams or individuals.
There are three areas that need to be managed effectively in order to keep any
organisation on track to achieve its objectives.
PROCESS
Processes should be documented, reviewed and refined as part of a continuous improvement cycle.
PROJECTS
Projects should have an agreed scope and deliverables with a project lead accountable for meeting the project milestones and reporting on progress.
Performance
Performance relates to monitoring and measuring progress towards key indicators for the plan. Finding the right key indicators is crucial – you get what you measure!
STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT, PLANNING AND COMMUNICATION
- We build a picture of your current situation and how you want your organisation to look in the future.
- We enjoy capturing all your ideas, especially if these are widely different across the team!
- We can facilitate group discussions until you reach consensus about your goals and priorities.
- We commit to help you to achieve your goals if you need our support.
MEETING FACILITATION
- We enjoy facilitating group discussions to generate ideas or find a way forward on difficult topics.
- We have experience with small groups (<10 people) and large workshop style events (>100 people) with a co-facilitator.
- When conflicts or differences of opinion arise, we are able to suggest ways that help the group to move forward.
PROCESS REVIEW AND IMPROVEMENT
- We encourage you to dig into your processes and work out where you are losing time, energy and/or money.
- We will work with your team to redesign processes and improve efficiency.
- We persevere if we don’t find the solution first time around.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND DELIVERY
- We are known for bringing projects back to life, because when we take on a project we don’t put it down again until we’ve delivered the results people need.
- We spend time understanding your project; we are not daunted by getting only half the story, because we will know where to go looking for the other half.
- We clarify your goals and how you will measure the success of your project so we focus our energy in the right areas.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
- We understand that you ‘get what you measure’.
- We believe that it is really important to think about how you will track performance at the start of any piece of work or strategy.
- We will help you to set stretching, but realistic, targets and consider how you will monitor each of these