Operational Planning Accelerator
Strategic plans, and more importantly, the operational (tactical) plans supporting them, need to be occasionally re-energized to refocus everyone involved on accomplishing work towards plan goals on a day-by-day basis. A skilled outside planning expert and facilitator are needed to help break logjams that build up and impede progress in strategy execution.
Description:
The Operational Planning Accelerator is a short-burst engagement that packs a big punch for any sized company or organization, with minimal intrusion on valuable management time. The Operational Planning Accelerator can be extremely beneficial at any point during the year, bringing synergy, invigoration and alignment between executive management and divisional, business unit and department leaders responsible for assisting in strategic plan goal accomplishment.
The Operational Planning Accelerator puts the control in your hands by diagnosing plan execution problems before they can derail your organization's strategy and giving you actionable steps to remedy issues.
Internally, we refer to the Operational Planning Accelerator as SOAP (Strategic and Operational Analysis Program).
The acronym SOAP is a metaphor related to “scrubbing” the strategic plan execution tactics to improve upon the overall strategic plan results.
We offer the Operational Planning Accelerator to help expose new client organizations to the value of our approach and to demonstrate the powerful effectiveness that well-performed operational planning has on achieving strategic goals.
We deliver the Operational Planning Accelerator in a highly concentrated 2-week engagement, intended to correct issues, reset focus on action with accountability and position our clients to be successful with their strategy implementation on their own.
Can you really understand our business and help us plan more effectively than we can ourselves?
The value of having a good process is that it can be applied successfully wherever it is needed. We’ve applied our Operational Planning Accelerator process successfully across a wide array of industries, such as: transportation, high-tech, manufacturing, hospitality, business services, government and financial services. The process itself accounts for the fact that every organization is unique.
Who delivers this service? Seniority?
In the past, this type of strategic plan "tune-up" was only offered during the mid-plan-year months. It is now available year-round, with each engagement delivered by a Partner or Senior Associate. While there are similarities across industries and planning disciplines - there is no “one size fits all” solution to accelerate operational plan performance, therefore Method Frameworks deploys our most senior resources on these engagements to ensure quality and depth in our delivery.
Can you really get anything accomplished in just two weeks?
Yes, but depending upon your organizational structure and company size, we might recommend that more than one Operational Planning Accelerator engagement would be needed to be fully comprehensive and the most highly effective. In a very large or complexly organized business structure, there may not be enough time to go as deep into the plan analysis as we would normally be able to. Workshops are also less effective if too many participants must be involved or if some participants try to attend via video conference. In such cases, we would likely encourage you to focus the engagement on a segment of the business, such as a division / business unit / department. This can serve as a pilot and help you decide if you wish to do further engagements elsewhere in the organization.
Will this approach work with large, geographically dispersed companies?
In a very large or complexly organized business structure, there may not be enough time to go as deep into the plan analysis as we would normally be able to. Workshops are also less effective if too many participants must be involved or if some participants try to attend via video conference. In such cases, we would likely encourage you to focus the engagement on a segment of the business, such as a division / business unit / department. This can serve as a pilot and help you decide if you wish to do further engagements elsewhere in the organization.
What client time and effort is required?
Our process is very organized and designed to lead you through the engagement with clear communication, checklists and support. Our goal is to minimize the intrusion on executive time.
We will provide you a list of the documentation we need in advance. We will also require a short planning session in advance of the onsite portion of the engagement to begin preparation for the workshop. This coordination can be done by phone and email.
Other than coordinating the gathering and delivering of that material, the only other time and effort required is to coordinate with on onsite team when they arrive to have a place to work and to ensure the proper workshop attendees have been identified and will be there for the workshop.
I'm interested, but what is the process to explore it further?
Just complete the form below. You will not be contacted by a salesperson, but instead you will be called by one of our planning consultants that are accustomed to delivering Operational Planning Accelerator engagements. They will be prepared to answer all of your questions and lead you through the process of booking a date for the engagement.
How It Works:
The Operational Planning Accelerator engagement has two parts: a one week off-site analysis component and a one week on-site component when the workshop is performed, final results analyzed and the deliverable is presented. The two weeks may not be concurrent.
Remote Prep
During the first week, prior to coming on-site, we will review your current strategic plan, plan-related assignments, governance reports and accountability structure for plan execution.
On-site Delivery
We will then come on-site and facilitate a 1.5 day workshop with your executive team, designed to refocus and re-energize your organization’s leadership on strategic priorities, execution of plan goals and correct identified issues with the "operationalization" of the strategic plan. The workshop is designed to uncover execution inhibitors that can be addressed as well as possible plan accelerators that can be leveraged to improve performance. The workshop on its own is quite beneficial, run by experienced planning facilitators; however, the findings from the upfront review and the workshop outcomes are the real value. All are are compiled and analyzed to produce a concise and actionable report deliverable.
Deliverables:
- 1.5 Day facilitated workshop
- Recommendations report
- Suggested assignments relative to recommendations
Duration:
Two weeks of consulting time, with one week performed off-site in advance of the 1.5 day workshop and the second week conducted onsite.
Minimal Intrusion on Management Time
Management time commitment limited to the following:
- Collecting and sending strategic plan materials in advance of the engagement
- Workshop participation (1.5 days)
- Review of findings and recommendations report
Pricing:
$7,500.00, plus expenses invoiced at cost
Request More Information
Please complete the form below. You will not be contacted by a salesperson, but instead by one of our planning consultants that are accustomed to delivering Operational Planning Accelerator engagements. They will be prepared to answer all of your questions and lead you through the process of booking a date for the engagement.
