Greetings!Welcome to our December newsletter - we hope you will find this informative and useful. If there is anything else you would like to see or there are comments you would like to make, then please don't hesitate to get in touch. In this series of newsletters we don't want to talk about ourselves and our achievements, but would rather try to help and inform you. We will, therefore, be looking at new ideas, or old ideas that have gained new importance (at least in our opinion). Also, if you found this useful you might enjoy keeping an eye on our new blog where ideas and information will be posted more regularly. You can also find previous newsletters in our archive. On the subject of blogging thanks to all who voted for us in the Computer Weekly awards. We were short-listed for the Corporate / SME blog of the year. We were really pleased to be selected for the shortlist by the edtorial team. Although we did not win the public vote, there was plenty to learn from the other great bloggers in the competition. If there is anything you don't like please tell us. If you enjoy it then do please forward on to anyone who might find this useful too. Good ideas are for spreading.  |
Making the MOST of your Strategy
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 Strategy is a word much used and much abused (and particularly abused in the context of those making poor attempts to claim strategic alignment when building business cases). However, let me lay aside my cynical and critical hat and share with you a process that really helps me whenever I have to address the creation of a strategic direction or the review of a strategy paper. Hopefully it will help you too. Firstly remember where strategy sits using MOST:
Mission - this should clearly and succinctly define the main purpose (e.g. of your organisation). A well known and succinct example comes from 3M:
"To solve unsolved problems innovatively."
Objectives - have to be more measurable and are typically results or desired states along with a timescale (remember SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed).
Strategy - is the means to the ends defined above, a long term direction. Typically this looks at the strategic options available, selects from them and sets out the high level approach and plan.
Tactics - describe how to put the strategy into action.
Focussing on the strategy, we recommend a fairly standardised approach that starts with a review of the Mission and Objectives. An analysis of the external environment is then carried out (e.g. political and economic factors, market conditions and competition) followed by an internal analysis of the organisation (e.g. capability and capacity, core competences and financial position). These are then summarised into a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. A handy hint here is just use internal analysis for Strengths and Weaknesses and just the external analysis for Opportunities and Threats.
Remember that strategies can exist at several levels. For example you would expect a large organisation to have a Corporate Strategy, several Group Strategies under that and then Programme Strategies or Account Strategies or some other set of layers that reflect the business. There should be a "golden thread" running through each of these and linking them together, this is all too often lacking.
As an example I was advising somebody recently who had been beaten up for their lack of a well documented strategy. This was not corporate level stuff, so I suggested they go back to the internal audit team (those doing the beating) and ask for a copy of the Business Unit and higher level strategies, as clearly they should align to these. Needless to say the higher level strategies were neither readily available nor in great shape, so this took some of the heat off them while they put their house in order.
As the old saying goes "If you don't know where you are going any road will get you there". I believe that was Lewis Carroll. While I have heard this used against planning as you will still get "there" you have to remember that in this case "there" is actually "anywhere". A good strategy will go a long way to help you get where you want.
If you would like to know more about strategy planning, alignment and implementation contact us to find out more.
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Stakeholder Management - Easing your Path to Success
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 Stakeholder management is arguably the most important element of managing complex projects and business change programmes. Ignore this at your peril. We will be visiting this topic many times on our blog to look at the various components and tools. Here we will introduce a high level summary. There are three basic stage to the process.
Analysis - identify who your stakeholders are. These are basically the individuals, groups and organisations you need to take account of during the project / programme lifecycle. Make this comprehensive and don't forget about interactions between stakeholders (e.g. the press often relies upon the action of a single, apparently powerless individual to give them the juicy information needed for a great story). There are many tools available and we have already looked at the Power Interest matrix here in our blog.
Planning - the key to success is then using the information gained by the analysis. If you haven't already done so, then prioritise your stakeholders and plan the right interventions to build as wide a support base as possible and to mitigate the risks from those might try and disrupt and derail what you are doing.
Execution - sorry couldn't resist that term, we mean executing the plan but I'm sure you can see how this might define the mutual feelings between PM and stakeholder when things are a little strained.
A key thing to remember is that key stakeholders often react well to a "good listening too" rather than the usual assault with PowerPoint.
We once had great success with a manager who was renowned for complaining about projects delivered to his business unit. This was a simple project from a technology perspective but everybody feared the outcome once the people became involved. For our key meeting I started with the simple question "If we could deliver an excellent migration, how would you describe it?". Having recovered from the initial shock they actually gave us a relatively simple set of business requirements. The project teams thought I was mad to use this approach but were surprised when the list came back almost identical to that they had developed. A few tweaks on prioritisation and, most importantly, a good mutual understanding of why different things mattered more to different groups emerged. I would say the actual delivery changed little but the perception of results was vastly different from previous projects.
One final point, this is an activity that should start as early as possible and carry right on through the programme or project. Perceptions change, external events make an impact, people change roles and come and go. There is no such thing as a static stakeholder map.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of stakeholder management don't hesitate to contact us.
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From Guerillas to Crunchy Monkeys - Compete Creatively
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It was the spring of 1984 when Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield heard the bad news. Ice Cream giant Häagen-Dazs were serving an ultimatum to distributors: stop stocking other premium brands or lose our business. Ben and Jerry's was not nearly big enough to win that fight with the distributors. Things were looking bleak as they realised they didn't have the resources to set up their own distribution channels or to fight a protracted legal battle.
Their response was creative, cheap and highly effective and took the form of a publicity campaign. They targeted this, very cleverly, against Pillsbury (the Fortune 500 parent company) so that outsiders would see two hippies taking on a faceless global giant rather than two ice-cream companies engaged in a turf war. They also steered clear of the Häagen-Dazs magic story - Reuben Mattus arriving from Poland with his widowed mother, dropping out of school at 10, building the business and selling to Pillsbury only the year before.
Adopting a strap-line of "What's the dough boy afraid of?" and variations on that (he's the Pillsbury icon/mascot shown in the picture above). They printed 1-800 (0800 / freephone numbers) on all their cartons so people could phone in and find out more. Supportive T shirts and bumper stickers were produced and rapidly adopted by many. The cause gained attention nationwide and by the autumn Pillsbury settled out of court allowing distributors to continue stocking Ben and Jerry's.
Not only did their sales leap 120% that year in spite of distribution challenges and the owners a little distracted, but also they laid the foundation for a major global brand selling all sorts of creative varieties - including Crunchy Monkey.
Be creative, play to your strengths and don't be afraid to use guerilla marketing to take on the 800lb gorilla in your market. Now that's enough ape and monkey references for one story!
We hope you found this story inspiring, informative and enjoyable. We will carry some more in the future, if you know of a good story or even have one involving your own organisation that could help our readers then do get in contact.
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Thanks for your time and we hope you have enjoyed reading this edition. If you have found it useful please tell your friends, if you have not, or would like to see anything else discussed then please tell us. Please keep an eye on our blog and get involved in the discussions!! Until the next time....... Yours Sincerely, 
Peter Stansbury
Managing Director
Stansburys Ltd
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Not Thinking Straight? It could be Confirmation Bias in Action
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In the first of our "Not Thinking Straight?" series we take a look at Confirmation Bias.
After all, doing business is really all about dealing with people, and we believe the better you understand yourself and others, the better prepared you will be to avoid living up to the following (misquoting Groucho Marx):
"Business is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
Confirmation Bias is the tendency we have to filter information in order to support our own preconceptions, ideas and hypotheses.
Two key areas where this occurs are: Searching for information and processing information. You will no doubt agree (I am biased and sure you will agree with me.....) that these are two vital activities in our daily business lives.
Searching for Information
When searching for information the risk is for a bias towards finding confirmatory evidence and discarding or not looking for contradictory evidence.
In addition people often phrase the questions in a way that is likely to confirm the hypothesis.
Bear in mind we are not talking about the intentional bias (e.g. a drug companies suppressing studies that might jeopardise accreditation) but the actions of the well-intentioned.
Anyone who believes that Friday 13th is an unlucky day is more likely
to to be looking for things that do go wrong on this day.
They might ask questions like "Do you notice how bad things happen on Friday the 13th?" without asking the same question of Mondays, other Fridays, asking an open question or actually doing an analysis of when bad things actually happen.
Processing Information
In this case we tend to attach the greatest weight to supporting evidence.
In our example from above the superstitious person is very likely to remember anything that does go wrong on on the unlucky day and attribute it to the 13th effect without looking too hard for alternative causes.
An excellent experiment was carried out on self-confessed "strong" Democrats and Republicans in the run up to the 2004 election. All were shown statements by George W. Bush and John Kerry. In both cases the candidates contradicted themselves. The readers were highly critical of the "opponent" but let their "own man" off the hook.
Even more intriguingly, fMRI brain scans showed the part of the brain involved with reasoning was pretty quiet during this process, while the parts associated with emotion and conflict resolution were highly active.
Things to Consider
Remember the political supporters, while it is ideal to pick a real enthusiast to lead a project, this person could be highly susceptible to this bias. You probably need to balance the team with the right sort of sceptic to look for the negatives.
You might also want to consider approaches such as the 6 thinking hats from our October edition and other tools that help bring the rational part of the brain back into action.
Do your corporate processes just make this worse? Many companies use advocacy based business cases. Different people write, put forward and support their own cases. Typically the most positive cases with the best supporting evidence win the money. Are they selecting the best projects or just the most biased cases from the optimistic managers most susceptible to confirmation bias?
To find out more about the impact confirmation bias on your business and ways to combat it, don't hesitate to contact us.
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