OST and strategic planning: a late comment

[Scott Gassman]

Kerry,

Thank you for sharing your pleasures and your insights.
Scott

On 11/8/07, kerry napuk <k at napuk.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi
>
> Just returned to the UK after six weeks celebrating the 50th
> anniversary of ON THE ROAD with my son, David, through nine western
> states and 5,500 miles.  While shaking out the dust, I stumbled across
> the theme on OS and strategic planning.  Please forgive these late
> comments about a subject close to my heart.
>
> Having served on 15 boards, I realised there must be something more to
> life than growing another 5 to 10% next year.  After considerable
> research, I discovered there was no planning model for small and medium
> size organisations, just numerous approaches for big ones.  This led to
> writing a book, THE STRATEGY LED BUSINESS: Step by step strategic
> planning for small and medium size companies (McGraw-Hill, 1996) and
> facilitating several top teams to an agreed future they created.  But a
> common problem emerged:  the senior team was bonded to a future but
> nobody else owned it, because they did not participate in framing that
> future.  Moreover, the senior team failed to capture vital front line
> experience and creativity of all their people.
>
> This realisation led me to large group work including Open Space and
> bringing the whole system into one room to look at the future and agree
> key issues and priorities.  After experiencing this wider dynamic,
> Eddie Palmer and I wrote THE LARGE GROUP FACILITATOR'S MANUAL (Gower,
> 2003).  In the manual we created a Vision Search and Strategy Search
> for whole systems.    The following useful hybrid approach developed:
>
> 1. Open Space with the whole organisation to identify issues,
> opportunities, threats, and priorities that should be considered by the
> top team when framing a future direction, objectives and goals.
>
> 2. Using this framework for the future, the whole organisation goes
> back into Open Space to agree strategies, detailed action plans,
> resource allocation and priorities.
>
> Plans also can be reviewed periodically in Open Space.
>
> Kerry Napuk
> Edinburgh
> www.openfutures.com
>
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-- 
Scott Gassman
IdeaJuice
(917) 951 - 0258
scott.gassman at gmail.com

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