Audio ARTICLE
OF THE MONTH
Stranova Interviews Carol Sanford
Carol Sanford's MP3 interview on an Innovative Approach to Strategic Planning.
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Case Studies
Protein Technologies, Pacific Operations, Hong Kong
Situation: Gaining strategic alignment, across counties and regions, became imperative when a new strategic direction was developed in 1998. The strategy hinged on gaining FDA approval of a marketing claim for health benefit—approval that needed be capitalized on quickly to gain the return needed. In order for the organization to up to the task of realizing the enormous potential of the opportunity, it was crucial to build capability across the workforce to exercise consciousness (self-management and collective engagement toward a compelling purpose) while engaging with the strategic work developed by the executive team.
Nature of the engagement:A yearlong series of capability building and decision-making events were held in four regions around the world, bringing together the leadership of the businesses in each area (Asia Pacific, Central and South America, Europe/Middle East, and North America). We worked on capability to exercise intellectual capacity and then engaged in the development of strategic thinking and execution. In the capability building sessions new execution strategies were developed that were rolled out over the following two years. These strategies led to market growth that exceeded the total growth-to-date throughout the company’s thirty-year existence. The new capabilities and processes continued to develop and were carried back into the organization and continued to accelerate the results.
Bottom line:
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Transnational alliances formed organically among those attending and were still sustaining several years later. These led to operational improvements and cross-national collaboration – there was a great multiplier effect.
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Leadership roles necessary to carry out the new direction were exercised with greater clarity than had ever been achieved through traditional alignment processes. We greatly reduced the time usually lost to telling people repeatedly what their actions were to be and redoing off target work.
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Greater Will to contribute to the strategic direction of the business and toward overall business success was generated and is still sustained several years later.
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Highly successful marketing campaign was executed with full support of all functions and stakeholders.
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Built a sense of “one world” and we effect one another deeply and permanently by our actions.
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A decision to create markers that would accurately identified genetic modification made to seeds and a strong decision to continue to offer non-modified seeds in their portfolio as a supported and advocated product.
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