Key Elements: An Effective Strategic Plan

• States objectives succinctly
• Clarifies link to institution's goals
• States realistic resource premises
• Defines scope (not boundless nor vague)
• Contains both analytical and synthetic elements:

Synthetic Elements

• Tests 2-5 feasible models
• Seeks form-giving overarching principles
• Finds "leveraging" strategies
• Redefines "rules of the game"
• Finds win/win solutions
• Targets selective opportunities
• Seeks selective excellence
• Discards strategies that do not yield sustainable gain
• Demonstrates that selectedstrategy = simplest, most resourceful alternative to accomplish objectives

• Basic assumptions
• Important premises
• Identified customers and
• "stakeholders"
• Customer needs and their performance expectations
• Stakeholder expectations
• External standards
• Criteria to evaluate alternate courses of action
• Obstacles and constraints
• Potentially exploitable assets
• Ultimate success measures

Key Elements: An Effective Strategic Plan (continued)

• Identifies critical path to successful implementation
• Strikes a balance: roles of people, uses of technology
• Does not resort to external assignment of responsibility for vexing problems
• Includes communication plan
• Body of plan does not exceed 10 pages

Key Elements: A&BS Action Plans

• Attainable within one year
• States improvement objective:
• Customer-driven service objective
• Process streamlining or simplification, technological
• upgrading, policy simplification, outsourcing, paper-
• reduction, or importing an exemplary practice.
• States problem(s) to be solved in order to achieve objective
• Defines scope (not boundless)
• Based on known resources
• Strikes a balance: roles of people, uses of technology
• Identifies team of project participants
• Identifies leadership of team
• States measurable result that will define successful completion
• Identifies key tasks and "deliverables"
• Sets overall performance deadline
• Targets milestone deadlines for key interim tasks
• Described in < 1 page and capsulized in one paragraph

Key Elements: Useful Performance Measures

• Derived from institution's stated goals
• Linked to customer-driven performance objectives
• Operationally sound:
• Focused on a "key deliverable" product or service
• Complete product outcomes (not process components or inputs)
• Few, focused -- 1 or 2 per "key deliverable"
• Economical to measure
• Benefit/cost ratio >1 -- measurement "pays for itself" through improved resource-effectiveness
• Translatable into individual action:
• Individuals can use measures to change their behavior in ways that improve the organization's performance
• Understandable
simple
credible
common-sense
"Content-dense" -- much insight per unit of data
"Post-able" -- understandable if posted in the workplace
Consistent with explicit and implicit reward systems