Events
How the Australian Census is part of one big Strategic Plan
Tuesday 2 August 2011
The Census coming up in Australia next week forms a significant input to policy decisions. Based on the information gathered across the nation, policy makers will assess the direction Australia has taken compared to the last Census. The challenge for policy makers is two fold: 1. Are we asking the right questions in order to have a better understanding of the way our future is shaping up? and
2. If all we do is compare this Census results to the last one, we are using History as our sole guide.
And as you know, history is just one part of the Strategic Planning process. History can change, overnight or in an instant as people in Christchurch understand, as many in Fukishima know and as multiple people in the Africas discover regularly. There are things we can learn from the Census process for our own organisations - for instance, when was the last time you took your company's 'temperature' to see how it was tracking? Have you actively checked progress and asked 'what events helped change direction or keep us on track?
And as Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber says often - have you identified emerging signals of change because Trends are not your friends!
In your Strategic Planning initiatives the past and present need to be included as inputs but remember always, history is a cold blanket. If you want to shape your future so that it is more like the type you want, you must include within your Strategic Planning processes, an ongoing commitment to Environmental Scanning (ES). Without ES you increase the risk of being blindsided by something that was intimately knowable.
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Events
Monday 2 April 2012
We recently held a Strategic Planning session just out of Christchurch in Lansdowne in New Zealand on the 31st of March. Many of us had a chance to spend some time in Christchurch and look at the sad state of the city only a year on from the devastating earthquake. There's still much to do and both civil and strategic planning is high on the agenda of businesses across the region.
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Monday 30 January 2012
I've had a good opportunity to study all sorts of organisations up close and personal so take this as one person's informed view as to the barriers to getting change to happen and to stick. There's lots of talk about internal competencies, about getting people on board, about clear direction and good communication of what is planned. But in the end my experience working across industry sectors leads me to pick one, above all other barriers to change - permission.
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Thursday 19 January 2012
Founder of The Australian Strategic Planning Institute and Director of Looking Up Feeling Good, Marcus Barber has written an article highlighting the commonalities across doing well and doing poorly organisations which you can download for free via this link:
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