Stephen Haines of the Haines Centre for Strategic Management presented to the NY Metro Chapter on September 23rd, 2008 on “Reinventing Strategic Planning to Deliver Customer Value” was a 90 minute discussion on the challenges and best practices that his colleagues are finding around the world with regards to strategic planning. With offices and clients in 20 countries, his firm collects data on what works or fails in the practice of strategy. The following are excerpts from the presentation that came about at the first NY Metro chapter meeting.
He started us off by giving us his definition for strategic planning, a desire for change and how it is communicated with the primary job of leaders being implementing planning and change. The next thing you need to think about are the desired outcomes-results. Is it higher profits? Enhanced market share? Change to employee culture? Mr. Haines quoted Stephen Coveys 2nd habit from his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind”.
He emphasized how great leaders can take complexity and make it simple or easy for everyone to understand. This supported his definition for success = speed, clarity, simplicity. Organizations often fail due to a lack of understanding that a single, one time intervention won’t change much. It only results in a short term fix. “Real change requires multiple strategies focused on clear outcomes” OD Practitioner, May 2007.
Here is a short excerpt from the Haines Centre website that describes the Systems Thinking approach he has developed;
Strategic Thinking and Systems Thinking is based on the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the father of our Systems Thinking Approach®. His pioneering work in forming The Society for General Systems Research conceived the Science of Systems Thinking as a Unity of Sciences.
It is directly applicable to the way all human beings, teams and organizations function, much as natural systems do. Underlying these systems are complexities (represented in our studies by the Rubiks Cube) that have, at their heart, simple, fundamental foundations.
By grasping the fundamentals and essence of how an organization works, as a system within a set of larger systems, it is possible to work through the complexity and arrive at real, effective solutions to difficult individual, business or organizational problems. In The Systems Thinking Approach®, we see this as “Simplicity on the Far Side of Complexity”.
The following link is an audio link to a presentation that Stephen Haines did on Enterprise Wide Change - Leading Enterprise Wide Change
The presentation he did for us at the NY Chapter is worth a view and available for members of the Association of Strategic Planning at www.strategyplus.org
Stephen G. Haines, founder and CEO of Haines Centre International and its four Haines Companies including his publishing companion, Systems Thinking Press, based in San Diego, CA, Steve is the world’s foremost authority, leader and speaker in The Systems Thinking Approach™ to the field of Strategic Management (Planning – People – Leadership – Change – Customer Value). His website is http://www.stephenhaines.com/
Steve Ramirez – ASPNY