Strategic Planning
Organizational Alignment
Highly aligned companies are 58% faster and 72% more profitable (source: LSA Global). Do you have a strategic planning process that aligns your functional leaders and sets your organization up for success? Every department and team member has an important role to play in how you achieve your mission, but are they spending time on the most important payoff activities each week, month, or quarter to reach your annual goals? How do you align your entire organization and priorities, and hold leaders accountable? How do you know what is happening across the entire business as well as uncover pain points or concerns that are interrupting the business or worse, that could derail you?
We can help you set up a consistent, winning strategic framework that will open your lines of communication, bring clarity to your teams, keep people focused on the most important activities, and build accountability throughout your organization.
Contact us for a free 30-minute consultation to see if we can help set you up for success!
The SWOT Analysis
This critical first step toward understanding all the internal and external factors affecting your business will drive how decisions are made later in the process. Ducere can save you time and money by conducting an unbiased, full SWOT analysis for your organization. We deliver the research results and recommendations to give your strategic planning a big boost!
When executed effectively, the SWOT results serve as a data-driven compass for strategic planning, pivotal business choices, marketing, enhancing product/service offerings, and more.
Read more about the SWOT analysis and tips for conducting your own below.
Just Cause
An organizational “just cause” is different than your mission and vision. It is the very purpose you exist, and every organization has one. It is the WHY; it is an underlying, inspirational, and unreachable idea. Having a “just cause” connects your employees to purpose and meaning.
You can have the best operations, salespeople, HR staff, IT department, website designers, social media strategist, or marketing team, but if they are not able to connect their work to meaning—the greater purpose of the organization—they will be less engaged and have lower productivity. If your employees truly believe that the work they are doing contributes to something meaningful, they will be intrinsically motivated and naturally become your strongest company advocates, championing success and a healthy culture.
Finding an inspiring company purpose may not be easy. You may not be a company that saves lives, rids the earth of plastics in the ocean, or feeds the hungry, but you do have an inspirational purpose. Experienced consultants at Ducere can help you uncover that meaningful reason that inspires all stakeholders connected to your organization.
Read more about The Power of Purpose below.
Mission & Vision
At the heart of every successful organization lies a compass that guides its journey—the mission and vision. Together, they guide your organization during times of prosperity and in moments when you may have lost your way. They inform leaders in strategic planning, knowing when to say yes or no to new ideas that could potentially propel or derail the organization. People often mistakenly mix these two up.
Your mission statement encapsulates and provides clarity about your core activities and primary goal; outlining the impact you aim to create and the solutions you bring forth. What do you do, who do you serve, and why? It is your North Star, helping you be strategically focused and have the ability to say no to opportunities that may distract you.
Your vision paints a vivid picture of your future, inspiring and setting the course for growth and innovation. It is your desired future state or long-term aspirations for the organization, what you want to achieve or become, and guides decision-making towards achieving the envisioned future.
Leaders should craft their mission and vision and develop a continuous communication strategy. There are also key points in an organization’s life that call for a review and refining of their mission and vision statements. Ducere can professionally guide you through this critical, high-stakes process.
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Core Values & Behaviors
An organization’s set of core values is the critical moral compass and guiding light of your decision-making, interactions, evaluations, and behaviors. They are the three or four principal values that best reflect how you expect employees to behave, work with colleagues, treat clients, and do business with vendors and partners.
Leaders are typically very thoughtful about these; they are not just something you think of in an hour or a day and slap on an office wall. The process to identify your principle values matters significantly, then when they are communicated consistently and implemented with authenticity, these core values ultimately shape the soul of your organization. Ducere can help you get this critical component of your business right!
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Read more about crafting your core values below.
I highly recommend Rebecca to any organization that requires a leader who displays the ability to embrace corporate strategy while delivering tactical results.
MICHAEL CASTELLI | PRESIDENT & CEO