Stop Wasting Valuable Time – Affordably with the Competitive Strength Report

Key ideas from a Harvard Business Review article by Michael C. Mankins

The Idea in Brief
"Most leadership teams spend just three hours per month making strategic decisions. That translates into less than a week per year. Worse, many teams fritter away those precious hours on unfocused, inconclusive discussion rather than rapid, well-informed decision making.
The consequences? Delayed decisions that lead to wasted resources, missed opportunities, and poor long-term investments. One global firm spent more time each year selecting its holiday card than it did debating a vital Africa strategy.
How can your leadership team avoid such pitfalls? Spend your limited time on issues exerting the greatest impact on your company's long-term value. Deal with operations separately from strategy. Put real choices on the table, evaluating at least three viable options for every strategy. Use meeting time for decision making--not just discussion--and agree on what was decided. And move issues off your agenda as quickly as possible.
Your reward? Strategic decisions - made better and faster."

The Idea in Practice
"Apply these practices to make the best use of your leadership team's time:
Deal with Strategy and Operations Separately
Holding separate meetings for each prevents day-to-day operations from dominating your team's agenda and liberates time for substantive strategy debates.
Dutch banking giant ABN AMRO's board used to spend only about an hour per month on strategy, with most of its meeting time devoted to day-to-day operational details. But market changes required a more strategic focus. The board now spends slightly less time together - but devotes much more of that time to strategy, typically about 10 hours per month.
Focus on Decisions, not Discussions
Enhance the quality and pace of your team's decision making, for example by distributing reading materials in advance of meetings. Specify why participants must read them (e.g., for information only? discussion and debate? decision making?) This readies participants to devote precious meeting time to deciding crucial issues.
Measure the Real Value of Every Agenda Item
Prioritize meeting agenda items according to each issue's impact on your company's long-term value. Address high-value issues only, and delegate low-value issues to lower organizational levels.
At Roche, the Swiss drug and diagnostic product maker, CEO Franz Humer created a "decision agenda" comprising the 10 most important opportunities and problems facing the company. Leaders regularly update the agenda by quantifying the value at stake for each issue and spend over half of their meeting time on those ten items. This process has transformed the quality and pace of Roche's strategic decision making.
Get Issues off the Agenda Quickly
Develop clear timetables detailing when and how participants will decide each issue and who will approve final strategy.
At Cardinal Health, a pharmaceutical and medical supply distributor, senior managers continually ask themselves, "When must this decision be made?" and ensure that they reach decisions within a predetermined time. Results? Less over analysis and more rapid decision making.
Put Real Choices on the Table
Evaluate at least three viable alternatives (not just minor variations on one theme) before approving any strategy. This encourages teams to choose the best course of action, not just the most obvious. By debating alternative strategies, British retail bank Lloyds TSB decided to exit international markets, helping to expand its market value 40-fold between 1983 and 2001.
Make Decisions Stick
Explicitly agree on what was decided in the meeting. Then specify the resources (time, talent, and money) required to execute the strategy, as well as the financial results you've committed to deliver."

Our View
So that is what Harvard Business Review is telling us we ought to do. And we agree 100%.
But people are people and “ought” has never yet made a rice pudding – let alone persuaded a Management Team to take time away from the daily battle, priorities and urgencies. We have met so many business leaders who knew what they “ought” to do, but simply could not see how and where to start – and always “didn’t have the time”.
There is an additional and important aspect for which theorists and academics do not make a sufficient allowance. A high proportion of the extraordinary people in leadership positions have won their spurs operating their business – making it work every day. They are “doers” not planners. They have never had any educational or training opportunity to discover what “strategic thinking” is – let alone how to do it. And Michael Mankins’ "three hours per month making strategic decisions" would be unrecognisable to most of them

This is why we developed the Competitive Strength Report and Process specifically so that this critically important decision making is made readily accessible, simple and enormously time effective.

How does the Competitive Strength Report Process address the criteria set out by Michael Mankins?

Deal with Strategy and Operations Separately
The Competitive Strength Report questionnaire process takes 40 minutes for each member of the leadership team (or group) – it is 100% focused on how the organisation thinks about its strategy, however the questions are in the type of language familiar to operational people.

Focus on Decisions, not Discussions
The Competitive Strength Report Decision Process takes 1 working day (or 2 half days, more usually) for the leadership team (or group), provides concise templates to prepare for the meeting and focuses only on what decisions need to be made

Measure the Real Value of Every Agenda Item
The Competitive Strength Report gives an objective measure of how the organisation compares with the very best in the World – and identifies the financial implications.

Get Issues off the Agenda Quickly
The Competitive Strength Report Decision Process is highly structured to focus on directions and not details to ensure that items are addressed rapidly and decisively.

Put Real Choices on the Table
The Competitive Strength Report Decision Process demands that the leadership team (or group) make one of three critical choices – all three are valid options, all three have different outcome implications, the leadership team (or group) is required to make a conscious choice.

Make Decisions Stick
The Competitive Strength Report Process includes an Action Review, typically 3 months later, to ensure that decisions have been sustained and lessons learned and applied.

The Competitive Strength Report Process addresses these Harvard recommendations 100%. Well, that is a pleasant surprise for us. But with 40 years of practical experience in our international authorship team we have learned what does work and what does not.

It is this experience and expertise that has enabled us to design the Competitive Strength Report Process for practical, action centred, business leaders. It is not knee deep in managerial theory, we have tried very hard to avoid business school jargon and to provide simple practical guidelines.

The Competitive Strength Report Process simply says
“This is how your input shows your business compares with the very best in the world. These are the financial implications. These are the threats that you see coming up behind you. This is what they could do to you. Do you need a Transformation of your Performance? You have three choices, which one will you make?”

The Competitive Strength Report Process can deliver this within 3 weeks, with not more than 10 hours from each leadership team member and with a structured outcome that will enable them to sustain their strategic focus with less than one hour a month thereafter.
And, here is the big difference, because the Competitive Strength Report Process is web based and highly automated, it requires the absolute minimum of external assistance which makes it highly affordable.

If you would like to know more about the Competitive Strength Report and Process, please look at the website – or contact us via the ChangeWORLD website