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Maree Conway has particular expertise in managing strategy projects from beginning to end, and is able to coordinate and facilitate individual strategic activities and events to enhance organsational processes and plans.
The aim of a strategy project is to build futures ready strategy by collaborating with your staff to generate outcomes that are practical and useful 'on the ground'. All Maree's work starts with understanding the organisational imperative.
Understanding the Organisational Imperative
No matter what the project or engagement, the first step is to spend time working with relevant staff to understand the imperatives facing the organisation. This is a critical step in learning about how the organisation works, agreeing expectations and determining the output required at the end of our engagement with the organisation.
Once organisational imperatives are understood, projects are designed using a five step approach. Each of these five steps can be combined to form a single strategy project, or they can be undertaken as stand-alone activities. Typically, a full strategy project with all five steps will take between 10 and 12 weeks, although the exact time commitment will be negotiated to suit your organisation.
Step 1: Understanding Staff and Culture
All staff as have the potential to be strategic thinkers, since most staff in an organisation care about its future, and most would like to contribute to creating that future. Since it is these staff who will, ultimately, be implementing strategy, tapping into their views about the organisation's future at the beginning of a strategy project identifies how they see the future of the organisation, as well as issues that will need to be addressed during the project and beyond to implementation.
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What Clients Say...
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Maree was clearly expert in the scenario planning approach to strategic planning, she was open and honest in her dealings with us and provided excellent reference material and support to questions...The major workshops were under control, planned and managed very well. I admire Maree's ability to distill data into manageable units and draw order from the chaos. In terms of facilitation, Maree has a relaxed and inviting style...There were times when Maree needed to change the program to meet participants' needs and did so on the spot. She also managed objections very well and openly which allowed the program to progress.
Michele Haywood, Manager, Organisational Development and Improvement, Kangan Batman Institute of TAFE
The experience was a very positive experience. One of the issues for any organisation is always that of staff who may not wish to come along for the journey and ours is no different in this respect. All staff participated in the workshop. However their involvement in the scanning process was very patchy and perhaps did not work as well as hoped. Adjustments to the approach were made by Thinking Futures as a result which was great. A number of staff commented on the usefulness of the approach. The outcomes will provide a good stepping stone for moving forward.
Ellen Brackereg, Director, Student Support Services, University of Western Sydney
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Step 2: Scanning the Environment
Input from staff is then combined with rich knowledge about relevant trends in the external operating environment now and into the future. Working with your staff if that is appropriate, a tailored environmental scan is produced to identify those key trends and drivers of change likely to affect your organisation's future. Scanning outcomes are consolidated into a detailed report that provides input into the next step.
Step 3: Inspiring Futures
Facilitated scenario thinking approaches enable your organisation to transform the scanning information into insights to use to identify and flesh out your preferred future. The outcome of this step is futures ready strategy that will help you achieve that preferred future and that is documented in a one page strategy document that captures vision, mission, values and strategic objectives.
Step 4: Planning and Action
Writing useful strategic plans is a major challenge facing people today. The stage involves working with staff to write plans that align with the top level strategy statement, and that identify how individual units will contribute to achieving that strategy. Understanding the difference between strategic and operational plans is critical at this stage. The aim is to give life to stategy in day-to-day operations. This step can involve a review of existing plans and planning frameworks if required.
Step 5: Supporting Implementation
We view our its engagement with organisations as not ending once plans have been written and published. We continue to provide expert support and advice for staff as they move to implement plans, for the period agreed as part of the project plan.
Contact Maree Conway to talk about how your strategy development and implementation can be strengthened. |
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