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So if you
have not yet dozed off let’s add a little bit
more. We have 3 primary intentions:
As noted
above these primary intentions act as filters
for each and every one of our interactions over
the course of the year. This means that any
interaction, whether carefully planned or
completely unexpected is subject to
interpretation by one or more of these
intentions. We also believe that these
intentions will make us successful and we have,
and are discovering that we have, numerous
definitions of what success looks like for us.
We also
have 4 core intentions that focus more on
shorter term market activities or internal
needs.
These 7
intentions inform pretty much everything we do
and we talk about them constantly regarding the
interactions we have with each other, our
clients, our global partners and even with our
families when we’re talking about our business.
The key
thing with our strategy is that it is
fiercely process focused. And the process
is an interactive one. Our strategy will emerge
through those interactions with our intentions
focusing those interactions; not predicting
their outcomes. When you look at mainstream
thinking about strategy it is typically quite
different. It is fiercely results focused. And
the results are based on assumptions of
predictability. And although this thinking
creates how most people tend to go about
strategy, it is not what happens in
organizations. No matter how results focused
and no matter how hard you try to predict,
strategies always play out through interactive
processes. At TMS Americas we think its just
way easier to align the way we do strategy with
how it really happens.
So we’ve
focused a bit on what we do have as part of our
strategy. It might be good to also focus on
some of the things we don’t have in our
strategic intentions document.
We don’t
have hard financial targets, we don’t have
values statements, we don’t have action plans.
Some people reading this would likely say we’re
a disaster just waiting to happen. They would
say this because they would make a correlation
to these missing pieces to mean we don’t care
about money or targets or goals, we have no
moral compass, and we probably don’t have very
focused activities if we do anything at all!
Yet if you’ve worked with us at any level of
depth, you know that we care about goals and
targets (some of those definitely financial), we
do have strong values, and we have action plans
for almost every day. We just don’t think they
are very effective to put into a strategic
document since all of those things emerge each
day in our processes of interacting with others
to do our business. We think putting that level
of detail into a strategic document is not only
ineffective, it restricts thinking
unnecessarily, and it sets people up for
failure.
Back in
2005 we wrote an e-book called Strategic
Identity - The Emergence of Strategy Through
Interaction. It’s been about 2 ½ years since we
wrote that and in reading back through it; it
outlines many of the concepts and thinking
behind a process focused, interactive approach
to strategy. Our thinking has changed a bit
since then, but most importantly perhaps, is
that it has taken us 2 ½ years to actually write
what we think is a valuable strategic plan based
on that thinking. That’s not because we are
just slow or didn’t have it in our action
plans. It’s taken that long to let the thinking
come forward in our experience, to push that
very powerful mainstream thinking about strategy
aside to make room for these new perspectives.
For 2 years we just didn’t write a strategic
plan, what we were used to doing wasn’t
effective and our efforts to do something
different weren’t much better. As noted above,
thinking is one thing, doing is another.
At the
beginning of this year we thought we really
needed a strategic plan, it was an important
document to run our business effectively. We
let our experiences over the past number of
years come forward in really trying to work with
complexity and complex responsive processes and
we sat down and wrote our document. It took
about a day. A long time to get to that day.
But it seems our document is doing what we
hoped. It informs ALL of us how we do our work
each day and provides a framework for us to
interact within our days. What more could you
really want from a strategic document.
If you
would like a copy of our 2005 e-book, just
connect back to
Inquiry@TMS-Americas.com
and mention that you read about it in this e-newsetter
and we will email you a complimentary copy;
since it might just help to differentiate us a
little bit in the market and it might be a way
to build a relationship to create opportunities.
Ó Team
Management Systems Americas
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