You can never plan the future by the past

Edmund Burke was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party.

He is mainly remembered for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition to the French Revolution. Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals in the 19th century.Since the 20th century, he has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservationas well as a representative of classical liberalism.

Companies have four types of Assets-Physical, Intangible, Financial and Human. Human Assets are the collective value of the capabilities, knowledge, skills, life experiences, and motivation of an organizational workforce.

Strategic planning is the process of defining the organizational plan, policy and allocating resources towards its achievement. The normal process starts with “The Mission Statement’, followed by a SWOT analysis and the establishment of goals and objectives.

Leaders must participate in the planning process. Leaders in the planning process need to:

• Challenge assumptions and offer a solid point of view
• Shape the culture, makes positive changes happen
• Acquires and deploys talent, embeds capabilities into the organization
• Recognizes business trends, forecast potential challenges and listens to others strategic thoughts.
• Believe in operational efficiency and utilization and metrics.

Leaders must understand the value of partners, “partner or perish”, they must understand the value chain and measure themselves. Leaders measure themselves against large reference groups, not their own peers.  One of the biggest mistakes organizations make when first benchmarking is that they limit their benchmarking activity to their own industry. Benchmarking within your industry is essential.

However, you already have a pretty good idea how your industry performs so it’s imperative that you reach outside and above your own industry into other industries that perform a similar process but may have to perform this process extremely well in order to succeed.

Leaders need to help the Team understand the value of metrics.