Strategic Outcomes

We help you to identify where you want to go and how you will know when you are there. Too many organisations focus obsessively about inputs. They prescribe budgets, employ timesheets, monitor expenditures and pat ourselves on the back when we come in under budget. But what does come in mean?

Too few of them are sufficiently concerned with outcomes. There are many reasons for this. Outcomes are difficult to define, harder even to measure, and represent an inconvenient and documented commitment when we wish to change our mind.

But of course outcomes reflect the very reason we attempt anything. What does value for money (cherished by all consumers) mean if we cannot describe both parts of the equation (I.e. inputs and outputs)?

If you are not being clear about outcomes, you are being very clear about failure.

Strategic Indicators
Defining worthwhile outcomes is not sufficient. You need also to provide useful measures and indicators is a vital part of any initiative. For how else will you know how you are progressing?

Measures are by definition quantitative and we strongly encourage such indicators. But in the end, what we really want is a clear and unambiguous definition of what evidence we would be able to point to in order to claim a successful outcome.

Criteria, Values and Priorities
Thinking that is creative, imaginative, divergent and lateral might be needed to determine appropriate solutions. We need to:

Using creative patterning (mind maps) and other tools we shall stimulate thought, cover new ground, and encourage daring thinking.

If in the end we cannot do better than our first stab or current wisdom - we will have given it our best shot. For the probability of having the current solution be the correct one, no matter now dour, must increase in the face of radical alternatives we end up rejecting.

Strategic Options Development
We seek an objective process by which we can select strategies. And we cannot determine the best strategy for fulfilling outcome promises, or even define what we mean by best until we have carefully identified the criteria by which we shall make such judgements.

For when we identify criteria, we are expressing our values, prejudices and will, and also those of the corporation.

Objectifying the decision-making is achieved to the extent it can be by exposing subjective thinking. There is nothing wrong with subjective thinking. We all do it. All the time. By exposing it, we simply mean drawing it out, revealing what we think and why we think it and inviting comment, submitting it to analysis and evaluation of the group and inviting others to do the same. For what is objectivity if not shared or common opinion. We can approximate shared opinion only by sharing our own opinions.

The act of sharing our opinions openly, honestly and without favour requires courage and support from colleagues and team mates. It also requires courage and sensitivity but properly handled it can bind a team.

Deliverables and Projects
Once you have;

From here, we are on familiar ground - we simply manage the project'.

Documentation