Sunday, March 18, 2007
Strategic Planning
Last week has been a rather exhausting but rewarding week.
I conducted a strategic planning workshop for a company in the business of exporting furniture to US and Canada. It was a two days workshop, conducted with the company's four shareholders. An extremely interesting mixed of nationality as the group consist of: 2 Malaysians, one American but very much "Malaysianised", and one true-and-true American whom is in-charge of US's operation.
The company has been in business for six years, and doing well. Entering into the next phase of organization life cycle, they needed to chart their course. My services to them consisted of two major scope of works:
1) Business Review to see where they are at now;
2) Strategic Planning to chart their next course of expansion plan.
At the end of the two-days workshop, we have accomplished (as promised of course):
- Vision, Mission
- Values
- Business Model and Business Definition
- Did the SWOT Analysis
- Defined Strategic Issues
- Determined Strategic Thrust
- Stated Strategic Objectives, including 5-years financial projection.
The main challenge is not the strategic planning process itself. I guess, many high profile consultants (from high profile consultancy firms, may be), professors in the higher learning institutions (Dr. So-and-So with numerous accompanied alphabets after the name) would arguably can do a better job than me, in taking about SP process and theory per se . That would be disastrous, in actual business context. My strength is in the instinctive understanding and framing of critical issues sorted from myriad strands of information and statements, and facilitate the SP process from the angle of what is doable, achievable, taking into consideration of client's maturity, organizationally, and most importantly, in terms of competency in planning (yes, planning is a competency by itself, and company need to learn to be competent in doing it).
And, in this case, possessing multi-linguistics skills helps:- English, Chinese, Malay, plus two other local dialects!
Like I said in the beginning, it was rewarding, and may I mention also, fun!
I conducted a strategic planning workshop for a company in the business of exporting furniture to US and Canada. It was a two days workshop, conducted with the company's four shareholders. An extremely interesting mixed of nationality as the group consist of: 2 Malaysians, one American but very much "Malaysianised", and one true-and-true American whom is in-charge of US's operation.
The company has been in business for six years, and doing well. Entering into the next phase of organization life cycle, they needed to chart their course. My services to them consisted of two major scope of works:
1) Business Review to see where they are at now;
2) Strategic Planning to chart their next course of expansion plan.
At the end of the two-days workshop, we have accomplished (as promised of course):
- Vision, Mission
- Values
- Business Model and Business Definition
- Did the SWOT Analysis
- Defined Strategic Issues
- Determined Strategic Thrust
- Stated Strategic Objectives, including 5-years financial projection.
The main challenge is not the strategic planning process itself. I guess, many high profile consultants (from high profile consultancy firms, may be), professors in the higher learning institutions (Dr. So-and-So with numerous accompanied alphabets after the name) would arguably can do a better job than me, in taking about SP process and theory per se . That would be disastrous, in actual business context. My strength is in the instinctive understanding and framing of critical issues sorted from myriad strands of information and statements, and facilitate the SP process from the angle of what is doable, achievable, taking into consideration of client's maturity, organizationally, and most importantly, in terms of competency in planning (yes, planning is a competency by itself, and company need to learn to be competent in doing it).
And, in this case, possessing multi-linguistics skills helps:- English, Chinese, Malay, plus two other local dialects!
Like I said in the beginning, it was rewarding, and may I mention also, fun!
# posted by Dr Roland Chia @ 8:49 PM 
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