{"id":1759,"date":"2017-12-13T08:19:09","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T22:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2018-02-08T14:50:28","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T04:50:28","slug":"strategic-planning-done-differently-to-drive-bold-thinking-in-a-risk-averse-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/strategic-planning-done-differently-to-drive-bold-thinking-in-a-risk-averse-bank\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategic planning done differently to drive bold thinking in a risk-averse bank"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The bank was obsessed<\/em> with planning, but the strong organisational culture did not encourage leaders to plan for and drive big, bold change. \u00a0In fact, excessive stretch or boldness was dis-incentivised.\u00a0 The \u2018sweet spot\u2019 was to look like you were being bold while not actually doing anything that involved risk or excessive disruption to the status quo.\u00a0 As a result, the leadership team \u2018muscle\u2019 in visionary strategic planning was weak. \u00a0The senior leader was an exception.\u00a0 He had been recruited internationally (in part due to his reputation as a disruptor) and given the mandate to drive digital transformation.<\/p>\n

The leadership team were a group of smart but conservative delivery managers.\u00a0 Having been through four restructures in two years they were jaded, cautious and underperforming.\u00a0 They were focused on delivering to project goals to meet commitments to their business stakeholders (with whom they did not have a smooth relationship).\u00a0 They were very reluctant to be held accountable for the achievement of anything more than day-to-day operations, especially if that meant accountabilities that cut across individual delivery silos.<\/p>\n

This meant an annual strategic planning process that typically ended in the creation of a set of goals that would tick the operational \u2018business as usual\u2019 box and at least appear to meet stakeholders\u2019 needs, but be far from strategic.\u00a0 Digital transformation, however, was thrusting these technology leaders into the limelight.\u00a0 The bank needed them to champion an end-to-end, technology-driven view that would secure significant and sustained operational savings. \u00a0They could no longer be passive \u2018order takers\u2019 to the business but rather needed to partner strongly with the business to set direction.\u00a0 This was not a comfortable change for anyone involved.\u00a0 The team didn\u2019t have the mindsets, the capabilities, nor the stakeholder relationships needed to contribute to shaping the bank\u2019s technology agenda the way they needed to.<\/p>\n

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Our Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n

Address mindsets first<\/strong> \u2013 There was never a need for an external consulting team to help with the mechanics of a \u2018normal\u2019 planning process.\u00a0 The step-change results were driven by surfacing, naming and addressing limiting mindsets up front in the process.\u00a0 We raised the real conversations \u2013 \u201cHow bold do you want to be?\u201d, \u201cWhat are you willing to give up to execute on a bold vision?\u201d, \u201cHow confident do you feel about shifting your relationship with the business?\u201d\u00a0 A series of tough, authentic facilitated conversations with the leadership team rapidly built trust, alignment and conviction towards a bolder outcome.<\/p>\n

Iterative, dialogue-based planning<\/strong> \u2013 We engaged the leaders and the organisation in an iterative, dialogue-based planning process.\u00a0 It started with high-level direction shaped from the overall bank strategy and the team\u2019s learnings from the past year\u2019s results.\u00a0 We harvested wisdom and tacit knowledge from the body of the organisation in a series of spiral planning conversations.\u00a0 Information was continually fed back to the leadership team to align with the vision top down.<\/p>\n

Radical transparency<\/strong> \u2013 We structured a communications approach that ensured the leadership team were regularly sharing progress with the wider team.\u00a0 This reinforced leadership commitment at each \u2018gate\u2019 of the process, ensured every single person in the organisation was part of the conversation, and accelerated the dialogue-based planning. \u00a0By the time the plan was finalised, the entire organisation already felt ownership over it because they had been part of shaping it.\u00a0 They moved straight to action.\u00a0 Lime produced the scorecard in a large public display format that was hung in the main communal area of the office to ensure ongoing visibility of progress.<\/p>\n

Structured decision gates<\/strong> \u2013 We structured the planning and metrics identification as a series of decision gates. \u00a0A regular agenda item at the weekly leadership team meetings over six weeks enabled us to accelerate the process while ensuring ownership with each and every iteration.\u00a0 Also, if conviction wavered at any point, or there was an attempt to revisit, we were able to quickly and easily trace the logical, progressive steps to the current point and cut off any unproductive looping back.<\/p>\n

(click on image to enlarge)<\/p>\n

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Results<\/strong><\/p>\n

The radically different planning process built ownership at every level and began generating improved, accelerated results before the plan was even finalised.\u00a0 The wider team pushed for outcomes and partnered with the leadership team to drive strategic action rather than being passive as they had been in the past. \u00a0The approach created a reinforcing system of accountability where the leadership team were held accountable because the goals and monthly progress tracking were made public on the display scorecard.\u00a0 The team were accountable to contribute and adopt an ownership mindset to overcoming obstacles because they had been involved in shaping and creating the content.<\/p>\n

The secondary outcome was the impact of the activity on the maturity of the leadership team. They shifted from being passive approvers of a set of actions and metrics to active co-creators of a scorecard that they were committed to delivering against. \u00a0They grew in confidence, reshaped their relationship with key business stakeholders and were able to release an industry-leading technology to market first.\u00a0 Several of the elements of the strategic planning process used were shared and adopted by other leadership teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The bank was obsessed with planning, but the strong organisational culture did …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1759"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2220,"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions\/2220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelimegroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}