Strategic Planning with SF

and other interesting vegetables...

David Shaked, UK SF Network Oct 2012

To Set the Scene...

Drain the oceanhttp://youtu.be/xR1MuTfCFm4 Dilbert importance of strategy http://youtu.be/U6DE93esEug Rushed strategic plans http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfzmpM DZk6Q

What brought us here?

What brought me?

What brought you?

Miracles...
Suppose we, somehow, knew everything we need to know about Strategic Planning with SF:
What would be different? How would we know that we know everything? How would others know?

What do we already know or have experienced?

About Strategic Planning?

And... About Strategic Planning through SF?

Strategy: Setting the Stage

What is strategy? Strategic Planning? How is strategy different from tactics? From business planning?

A Story...
The Facebook path for strategic Planning

Key Considerations for Strategic Planning with AI

Topic choice and reframing. What might be better? Who should be in the room? How to run the process?
Inquiry process Generative planning

How to harvest?
How to follow up/sustain?

SWOT Analysis
Traditional SWOT Analysis for Strategic Planning
Internal
Assessment

Strengths
Where can we outperform others?

Weaknesses
Where can others outperform us?

External
Assessment

Opportunities
How might we exploit the market?

Threats
What/who might take our market?

SWOT meets SOAR

Strategic Inquiry & Appreciative Intent
Strategic Inquiry

Strengths
What are our greatest assets?

Opportunities
What are the best possible market opportunities?

Appreciative Intent

Aspirations
What is our preferred future?

Results
What are the measurable results?

Source: Stavros, Cooperrider, and Kelley, 2003

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Where/When to use SOAR?

Shall we give it a go?

SOARing Strategic Planning + SF... SOARing SF... SOARing UK SF network... Creating an SF version of SOAR... Other ideas?

Reflections
How was the experience? Thinking of Strategic Planning with SF and/or AI - what do you now know that you didnt know before? What else?

What could be your next small step?

BACKUP

Key Concepts of Appreciative Inquiry

What we ask determines what we find
What we find determines how we talk How we talk determines how we see our future How we see our future determines what we achieve

Strategy Definition
Strategy is an articulation of the organizations vision and direction. It is both a plan to achieve the vision or overarching goal AND a vehicle to create shared meaning and coordinated action. Tony Silbert

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Strategy Definition
"Strategic planning has fallen from the pedestal it occupied when it came on the scene in the mid-1960s. Strategic planning failed because it is not the same as strategic thinking. Planning is about analysis--about breaking a goal into steps, formalizing those steps, and articulating the expected consequences. Strategic thinking, in contrast, is about synthesis. It involves intuition and creativity. The outcome of strategic thinking is an integrated perspective, a not-too-precisely articulated vision of direction that must be free to appear at any time and at any place in the organization. - Mintzberg, Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning
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SF Tools

Which one is particularly useful to Strategic Planning? How?

AI Principles
Constructionist

Wholeness

Positive

Anticipatory

Poetic

Simultaneity

SF Principles - SIMPLE

Strategic Canvassing
How to link the Excellent Strategic Canvassing process?