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Bite-sized learning platform. Free account option for individuals who love to learn & develop.

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Are you wondering how much the 5Mins learning platform costs for your business. You can find our pricing plans here.

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HBR: The Messy but Essential Pursuit of Purpose

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HBR: The Messy but Essential Pursuit of Purpose

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The Messy but Essential Pursuit of Purpose (HBR)

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Being a good listener can help you in every aspect of your life – with family and friends, and with your colleagues at work. Learn how to up your listening game.

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The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

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Amazon.com: The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever: 9780978440749: Bungay Stanier, Michael: Books

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Effective Listening: It's Not About the Nail

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Effective Listening: It's Not About the Nail

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This is a cute video & impactful, personally & professionally

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Recommended Reading: Coaching for Performance

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Recommended Reading: Coaching for Performance

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Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose - The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership, 4th Edition

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Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose - The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership, 4th Edition [Whitmore, John] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose - The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership, 4th Edition

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HBR Podcast: What Great Coaching Looks Like

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HBR Podcast: What Great Coaching Looks Like

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Richard Boyatzis, professor at Case Western Reserve University, says that every professional can benefit from having a coach — and serving as one for someone else. He says that a coaching relationship moves beyond mentoring or sponsoring in that it focuses on long-term values and aspirations. The be…

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Here is a sample of coaching questions using the SOON Funnel.

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1:1 Agenda (with Professional Growth focus)

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1:1 Agenda (with Professional Growth focus)

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Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

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A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It’s the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

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This is a session I've run for teams before about creating learning around share team values, norms, & team vision. Please take a look and I'm happy to chat about it.

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HBR: How to Help Your Team Learn in the Flow of Work

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HBR: How to Help Your Team Learn in the Flow of Work

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When we ask teams across different companies and geographies how often they're learning at work, they typically respond with "occasionally" and "infrequently." And when we ask what that learning looks like, the answer is often "when I took a course."

For many people, learning is still seen as something formal, structured, and scheduled - owned by organizations and delivered by experts. But in a work context characterized by complexity and uncertainty, it's a dangerous strategy to limit learning to something that's separate from our day jobs.

Failure to incorporate learning into the day-to-day creates challenges at every level in an organization. Learning in the flow of work - when learning happens in the moment and as part of the regular working day - is essential for everyone. For individuals, if learning is always an extracurricular activity, it reduces employability and career resilience. When teams don't find ways to learn as they work, they limit their performance. And for organizations, an absence of learning in flow reduces their ability to respond to change and compete in the market.

When individuals, teams, and organizations find their learning flow, it becomes so embedded into daily routines and rituals that it's no longer labelled as "learning," and instead becomes an integral part of how work happens. Here's what managers need to know about learning in the flow of work - and how to implement it on their teams.

3 Principles of Learning in Flow

There are three principles to keep in mind when creating a culture of learning in flow:

Learning is integrated.

Whereas we used to go to work to learn to do a job, learning now is the job. It's not something that should be scheduled for an hour each week or a day each month. The priority is to increase the learning people gain from the meetings, projects, and tasks that are already part of their jobs.

Learning is active.

Waiting or hoping for learning to come our way is the opposite of learning in flow. Instead, a proactive mindset and skillset is a must-have for learning in flow to take place. For learning in flow to become a reality, it requires continual and consistent actions by individuals and teams.

Learning is routine.

When learning in flow is effective, it becomes embedded into the rhythms, routines, and rituals of the way people work. Learning isn't owned by any one person - it's a collective responsibility and part of a team's culture. It shows up in the language that's used and the way people work together.

How to Help Your Team Learn in Flow

Here are three practices to help your team start learning in the flow of work:

Mistake moments

Everyone makes mistakes. It's whether people learn from those mistakes that makes the difference to individual and collective performance. When mistakes happen, it's easy to miss the learning opportunity, as we tend to focus on finding solutions quickly - while simultaneously beating ourselves up for getting something wrong in the first place.

Mistake moments are a simple way of learning in flow when things don't go to plan. This approach normalizes making mistakes, so employees fear them less and learn from them more. The idea is to quickly share with someone else when a mistake is made. The question to focus on isn't "What mistake did you make?" but instead "What did you learn from that mistake?"

In our organization, Amazing If, where everyone is based in different places, we've made it a team norm to share our mistake moments in a Teams channel the same day they happen. Role modeling is critical. As a manager, you could choose to start a monthly team meeting by sharing an insight you learned from a mistake you made. Normalizing mistake moments can also be as simple as suggesting a phrase that people feel comfortable saying to each other, such as: "I've had a mistake moment. Do you have five minutes to chat?"

Strengths spotting

Feedback is a powerful way people can learn at work, but all too often, formality, time, and process become blockers. When we find ways to bring feedback into the meetings and conversations that are already part of our work week, we increase the opportunity for learning in flow.

Consider a meeting or project you're currently leading. A small change to the format can make feedback a part of the agenda rather than an "add-on." For example, reducing the number of agenda items to create time for people to share in the moment "what worked well" and what would be "even better if" feedback on presentations is a quick way for people to learn. Or changing an existing meeting agenda once a month to focus on "challenge and build" creates an opportunity for everyone to practice raising concerns, discussing risks, and offering ideas for improvement in a safe way.

As a manager, another simple change you can make is to start one-on-one conversations by sharing some strengths-based feedback. The best managers proactively point out to their teams what they're doing well, which increases confidence and prompts people to stretch their potential. This could sound like, "I see you at your best when..," "One of the ways I see you have a positive impact is..," or "This week I really appreciated how you..."

Pitch, prototype, pilot

Experimenting is a natural opportunity to encourage learning in the flow of work. What often gets in the way of experiments is how to apply the concept practically and usefully as a manager of a team. Managers need to be on the lookout for easy opportunities to encourage everyone to experiment as part of their roles. We've found that using a "pitch, prototype, pilot" framework is a good way to get started.

Pitching creates the space for sharing new ideas, prototyping focuses on how ideas might work in practice, and piloting tests an idea in a "live" environment. The manager's role is to provide prompts and opportunities for team members to use this framework as part of their existing roles, reenforcing its relevance for everyone. Managers can start this process by asking everyone to consider three questions:

1. Pitch: What is one idea for improvement that would support you to achieve your objectives for this quarter?

2. Prototype: To make that idea happen, what would need to start, stop, or change?

3. Pilot: How could you test that idea quickly?

Once teams become familiar with the framework, they often start applying it proactively across different parts of their role. For example, a team member might initiate saying to their manager, "Can I use our catch-up to pitch an idea I've got?" and teams will begin to spot opportunities to prototype together.

. . .

Learning at work is fundamental to our roles and our resilience. If learning is always an add-on, the risk is that it never gets done. Learning in the flow of our work means it becomes part of our conversations and our culture, and small changes to how we approach what we're already doing can make a big difference to our development.

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How to Help Your Team Learn in the Flow of Work

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Learning in the flow of work - when learning happens in the moment and as part of the regular working day - is essential for everyone. When teams don't find ways to learn as they work, they limit their performance.

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Upwork: The Best Online Learning Sites for 2023

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Upwork: The Best Online Learning Sites for 2023

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382: How to Inspire Shared Learning, with Dan Schawbel

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Listen to this episode from Coaching for Leaders on Spotify. Dan Schawbel: Back to Human Dan Schawbel is a New York Times bestselling author, a partner and research director at Future Workplace, and the founder of both Millennial Branding and WorkplaceTrends.com.

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FranklinCovey: Achieving Results in Unpredictable Times

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FranklinCovey: Achieving Results in Unpredictable Times

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Episode #94 Achieving Results in Unpredictable Times

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Listen to this episode from FranklinCovey On Leadership with Scott Miller on Spotify. Join FranklinCovey's cadre of thought leaders as they share unique and enduring insight to navigate turmoil and uncertainty to achieve your highest and best results in the midst of rapid change.

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MITSloan: Developing Future-Ready Skills with Peer Coaching

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MITSloan: Developing Future-Ready Skills with Peer Coaching

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The Future of Workplace Learning

Peer coaching plays a foundational role in developing the human skills that technology cannot replace.

The forces of disruption reshaping the future of work moved at a faster pace than ever during the past year. With the pandemic making it unsafe for many people to work in person, companies around the globe turned to remote work and accelerated the use of automation technologies such as AI and robotics. COVID-19 brought about a reallocation shock, which economists at the University of Chicago estimate has caused three new hires for every 10 layoffs. They also predict that 32% to 42% of COVID-19-related layoffs will be permanent.

To avoid mass long-term unemployment, we must prioritize and pour efforts into preparing workers for the jobs of the future. Increasingly, these are the kinds of jobs that focus on uniquely human skills that current technologies cannot simulate - things like empathy, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication. Increasing such skills not only helps workers but also has real business implications: Human skills make companies stronger.

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The World Economic Forum's " Future of Jobs Report 2020" shows that workers recognize this. Topics like mindfulness, meditation, gratitude, kindness, and listening moved into the top 10 areas of focus among employed people, supplanting artificial neural networks, cloud computing, and general statistics.

Employers are also recognizing the need to increase their development initiatives for so-called soft skills, which are now also known as power skills or human skills. But businesses face a fundamental challenge: Most worker training was designed for teaching rote and technical skills. Traditional workplace learning programs were built to look like schools and universities, with teachers lecturing students. Even today this remains the case, with most programs following the same model.

Developing human skills is a completely different ballgame, where seminars and instructor-led workshops won't suffice.

Developing human skills is a completely different ballgame, where seminars and instructor-led workshops won't suffice. People develop skills like empathy, communication, listening, and the ability to provide constructive feedback by being put into situations where they have to put these skills to use.

This is a primary reason I focus on peer coaching, in which colleagues have guided one-on-one hourlong conversations, either in person or via video, on an ongoing basis. They ask each other questions, listen intently, offer ideas, and make plans to take a concrete action before their next session.

About the Author

Aaron Hurst (@aaron_hurst) is CEO and cofounder of Imperative and author of The Purpose Economy (Elevate, 2014).

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Developing Future-Ready Skills With Peer Coaching

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The Future of Workplace Learning Peer coaching plays a foundational role in developing the human skills that technology cannot replace. The forces of disruption reshaping the future of work moved at a faster pace than ever during the past year.

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Harvard Business School: Why is Strategic Planning Important?

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Harvard Business School: Why is Strategic Planning Important?

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Why Is Strategic Planning Important? | HBS Online

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Do you know what your organization's strategy is? How much time do you dedicate to developing that strategy each month? If your answers are on the low side, you're not alone. According to research outlined in the Harvard Business Review , 85 percent of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy, and 50 percent spend no time at all.

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Harvard Business School: 4 Ways to Development Strategic Thinking Skills

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Harvard Business School: 4 Ways to Development Strategic Thinking Skills

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Think back to the last time you participated in a strategic planning meeting for your organization. You were likely presented with a challenge to solve or goal to achieve.

Do you remember your contributions during that meeting? Did you offer compelling ideas and plot a course of action, or find it difficult to think strategically and develop a solution? Did you have a good idea, but struggle to communicate it in a logical way? Were you an active participant in the conversation, or did others helm it?

Strategic thinking skills are among the most highly sought-after management competencies. Why? Because employees capable of thinking critically, logically, and strategically can have a tremendous impact on a business's trajectory.

If you want to improve your strategic thinking skills, the good news is that, with the right mindset and practice, you can.

Here are four ways to improve your strategy skills, so the next time you're involved in a strategic planning meeting, you can ensure your contributions are noticed.

Free E-Book: How to Formulate a Successful Business Strategy

Access your free e-book today.

What Are Strategic Thinking Skills?

Strategic thinking skills are any skills that enable you to use critical thinking to solve complex problems and plan for the future. These skills are essential to accomplish business objectives, overcome obstacles, and address challenges-particularly if they're projected to take weeks, months, or even years to achieve.

Strategic thinking skills include:

Analytical skills: To ideate a strategy that helps your organization reach its objectives, you must be capable of analyzing a variety of inputs-from financial statements and KPIs, to market conditions, emerging business trends, and internal resource allocation. This initial analysis is crucial to creating a strategy that aligns with the current reality facing your organization.

Communication skills: Putting a strategy into place for your company, regardless of its size, requires solid communication skills. The ability to communicate complex ideas, collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, build consensus, and ensure everyone is aligned and working toward shared goals are all central to strategic thinking.

Problem-solving skills: Strategic planning is often used to solve problems or address challenges, such as missed financial targets, inefficient workflows, or an emerging competitor. Implementing a strategy that addresses the central challenge you face requires you to first understand the problem and its potential solutions. From there, you can craft a strategy that solves it.

Planning and management skills: Strategy isn't just about thinking of a solution-it involves implementation, too. Once data has been analyzed, the problem is understood, and a solution has been identified, you need strong planning and management skills to bring everything together.

How to Improve Your Strategic Thinking Skills

1. Ask Strategic Questions

If you want to improve your strategic thinking skills, one of the simplest things you can do is ask more strategic questions. Doing so allows you to exercise your planning skills, become adept at spotting opportunities, and develop a more strategic mindset you can leverage throughout your career.

According to the Harvard Business School Online course Disruptive Strategy, strategic questions can relate to a challenge, opportunity, or ambiguity you face in your current situation, whether personal or professional. They might, for instance, relate to launching a new business or product, beating a competitor, or structuring your organization for innovation.

It's also important that your questions apply to your role and responsibilities so you can act on them.

Some examples of strategic questions you might ask include:

How can we strategically position ourselves to enter a new market?

What's the direction for growth for each of our products or services?

Where will the organization's growth come from in the next five years, and how does it compare with where growth has historically come from?

How should the organization respond to the threat presented by potentially disruptive competitors?

2. Observe and Reflect

In addition to asking strategic questions, you need to answer and address them skillfully. One of the most effective ways of accomplishing this is to observe and reflect on your current situation, ensuring any strategy you conceive is grounded in facts.

For example, imagine that the business you work for has begun losing market share for one of its products among its traditional customers. At the same time, it's gained market share from an entirely new customer base. It's easy to assume why this might be happening, but doing so can lead you down the wrong path at a critical moment in your organization's existence.

Instead of blindly following an assumption, gather as much information as possible to use when crafting your strategy. For example, this might include conducting user interviews with new customers to identify the different jobs they hire your product to perform.

Understanding why new customers are attracted to your product can enable you to tailor your marketing strategy and product development to better embrace their needs.

3. Consider Opposing Ideas

Once you've landed on a strategy that can help your organization reach its goals, question your assumptions, and put your hypothesis through rigorous testing. By doing so, you can ensure you're not overlooking another possibility.

Playing devil's advocate with your ideas can allow you to preemptively identify weaknesses in your argument, and equip you to defend your strategy when others ask questions. It can also help you sharpen the logic skills you need to communicate and execute your strategy.

To develop this skill, get in the habit of questioning yourself any time you're about to make an assertion. Should you consider a different perspective? Is there another possibility you may have overlooked?

4. Embrace Formal Training

By practicing the methods described above, you can improve your strategic thinking skills at your own pace. However, there are other learning options you can pursue.

If you need to quickly ramp up your strategy skills-to address a pressing need your organization is facing, position yourself for a new role, or finally launch your own business-formal training might be your best option.

For example, by enrolling in the online course Disruptive Strategy, you can discover how to make innovation a reality for your organization. Over six weeks, you'll learn about the jobs to be done framework and disruptive innovation theory, and build skills to identify and execute high-level strategy.

Cultivating a Strategic Mindset

Whether in the long- or short-term, a strategic mindset can be developed through self-exploration, critical questioning, and formal training.

The advantage of having a strategic mindset is learning how to think rather than what to think. Although you might not always have the right answers, strategic thinking skills can empower you to spot new opportunities, address emerging challenges, and plan for future success.
Are you looking to develop a strategic mindset? Explore Disruptive Strategy, a six-week online course designed to cultivate the skills needed to craft winning strategies, or other online Strategy courses.

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4 Ways to Develop Your Strategic Thinking Skills | HBS Online

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Think back to the last time you participated in a strategic planning meeting for your organization. You were likely presented with a challenge to solve or goal to achieve. Do you remember your contributions during that meeting? Did you offer compelling ideas and plot a course of action, or find it difficult to think strategically and develop a solution?

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Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's that time again.

Every three to five years, most larger organizations periodically plan for the future. Many times strategic planning documents are shelved and forgotten until the next cycle begins. On the other hand, many smaller and newer organizations, propelled by urgency, may not devote the necessary time and energy to the strategic planning process.

Only 63% of businesses plan more than a year out. They fail to see that - contrary to Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire cat - "any way" does not take you there.

For all organizations, a more rigorous annual planning process is critical for driving future success, profitability, value, and impact.

John Kotter, a former professor at Harvard Business School and noted expert on innovation says, " Strategy should be viewed as a dynamic force that constantly seeks opportunities, identifies initiatives that will capitalize on them, and completes those initiatives swiftly and efficiently."

There's hardly a better case that can be made for dynamic planning than in the tech industry, where mergers and acquisitions are accelerating exponentially. Companies need to be nimble enough to navigate rapid change. In this case, planning should occur quarterly.

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is an ongoing process by which an organization sets its forward course by bringing all of its stakeholders together to examine current realities and define its vision for the future.

It examines its strengths, weaknesses, and strengths, resources available, and opportunities. Strategic planning seeks to anticipate future industry trends. During the process, the organization creates a vision, articulates its purpose, and sets strategic goals that are long-term and forward-focused.

Those strategic goals inform operational goals and incremental milestones that need to be reached. The operational plan has clear objectives and supporting initiatives tied to metrics to which everyone is accountable. The plan should be agile enough to allow for recalibrating when necessary and redistributing resources based on internal and external forces.

The output of the planning process is a document that is shared across the enterprise.

Strategic planning for individuals

Strategic planning isn't just for companies. At BetterUp, strategic planning is one of the skills that we identify, track, and develop within the Whole Person Model. For individuals, strategic planning is the ability to think through ways to achieve desired outcomes. Just as strategic planning helps organizations realize their goals for the future, it helps individuals grow and achieve goals in a unified direction.

Working backward from the desired outcome, effective strategic planning consists of coming up with the steps we need to take today in order to get where we want to be tomorrow.

While no plan is infallible, people who develop this skill are good at checking to make sure that their actions are in alignment with the outcomes that they want to see in the future. Even when things don't go according to plan, their long-term goals act as a "North star" to get them back on course. In addition, envisioning desired future states and figuring out how to turn them into reality enhances an individual's sense of personal meaning and motivation.

Whether we're talking about strategic planning for the company or the individual, strategic plans can go awry in a variety of ways including:

Unrealistic goals and too many priorities

Poor communication

Using the wrong measures

Lack of leadership

The extent to which that document is shelved until the next planning cycle or becomes a dynamic map of the future depends on the people responsible for overseeing the execution of the plan.

What is strategic plan management?

"Most people think of strategy as an event, but that's not the way the world works," according to Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. "When we run into unanticipated opportunities and threats, we have to respond. Sometimes we respond successfully; sometimes we don't. But most strategies develop through this process. More often than not, the strategy that leads to success emerges through a process that works 24/7 in almost every industry."

Strategic business management is the ongoing process by which an organization creates and sustains a successful roadmap that moves the company in the direction it needs to move, year after year, for long-term success. It spans from research and formulation to execution, evaluation, and adjustment. Given the pace of change, strategic management is more relevant and important than ever for assigning measurable goals and action steps

Many organizations fail because they don't have the strategic management team at the table right from the beginning of the planning process. A strategic plan is only as good as its ability to be executed and sustained.

A strategic management initiative might be driven by an internal group - many companies have an internal strategy team - or an outside consulting firm. Ultimately company leaders need to own executing and sustaining the strategy.

Strategic management teams

In this Harvard Business Review article, Ron Carucci from consulting firm Navalent reports that 61% of executives in a 10-year longitudinal study felt they were not prepared for the strategic challenges they faced upon being appointed to senior leadership roles. Lack of commitment to the plan is also a contributing factor. In addition, leaders attending to quarterly targets, crisis management, and reconciling budgets often consider the execution of a long-term strategy a low priority.

A dedicated strategic management team works with those senior leaders and managers throughout the organization to communicate, coordinate and evaluate progress against goals. They tie strategic objectives to day-to-day operational metrics throughout the enterprise.

A good strategic management group can assist in creating a culture of empowerment and learning. It holds regular meetings with employees. It sets a clear agenda and expectations to make the strategic plan real and compelling to the organization through concrete objectives, results, and timelines.

Benefits of robust strategic planning and management

Strategy development is a lot of work, but the benefits are lasting. After all, as the saying goes, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Taking the time for review and planning activities has the following benefits:

Organizations and people are set up to succeed

Increased likelihood of staying on track

Decreased likelihood of being distracted or derailed

Progress through the plan is communicated throughout the organization

Metrics facilitate course correction

Budgets enterprise-wide are based on strategy

Cross-organization alignment

Robust employee performance and compensation plans

Commitment to learning and training

A robust strategic planning process gets everyone involved and invested in the organizations

Employees inform management about what's working or not working at the operational level

Innovation is encouraged and rewarded

Increased productivity

10 steps in the strategic planning process

Begin by articulating the organization's vision for the future. Ask, "What would success look like in five years?" Create a mission statement describing organizational values and how you intend to reach the vision. What values inform and determine mission, vision, and purpose?

Purpose-driven strategic goals articulate the "why" of what the corporation is doing. It connects the vision statement to specific objectives, drawing a line between the larger goals and the work that teams and individuals do.

2. Conduct a comprehensive assessment

This stage includes identifying an organization's strategic position.

Gathering data from internal and external environments and respective stakeholders takes place at this time. Involving employees and customers in the research.

The task is to gather market data through research. One of the most critical components of this stage is a comprehensive SWOT analysis that involves gathering people and bringing perspectives from all stakeholders to determine:

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

Strengths and weaknesses - In this stage, planners identify the company's assets that contribute to its current competitive advantage and/or the likelihood of a significant increase in the organization's market share in the future. It should be an objective assessment rather than an inflated perspective of its strengths.

An accurate assessment of weaknesses requires looking outward at external forces that can reveal new opportunities as well as threats. Consider the massive shift in multiple industries whose strategy has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. While it was disastrous to the airline and restaurant industries' business models, tech companies were able to seize the opportunity and address the demands of remote work.

Michael Porter's book Competetive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors claims that there are five forces at work in an industry that influence that industry's ability to develop a competitive strategy. Since the book was published in 1979, organizations have turned to Porter's theory to create their strategic framework.

Here are the 5 forces (and key questions) that determine the competitive strategy for most industries.

1. Competitive rivalry: When considering the strengths of an organization's competitors it's important to ask: How do our products/services hold up to our competition? If the rivalry is intense, companies need to consider what capacity they have to gain leverage through price cuts or bold marketing strategies. If there is little competition, the organization has a substantial gain in the market.

2. Supplier power: How might suppliers influence strategy? For example, what if suppliers raised their prices? To what extent would a company need a particular supplier for our product(s)? Is it possible to switch suppliers in a way that is more cost effective and efficient? The number of suppliers that exist will determine your ability to keep costs low.

3. Buyer power: To what extent do buyers have the ability to shop around right into the hands of your competitors? How much power does your customer base have in determining price? A small number of well-informed buyers shifts the power in their direction while a large pool may give you the strategic advantage

4. Threat of substitution: What is the threat of a company's buyer substituting your services/products from the competition? What if the buyer figures out another way to access the services/products that it offers?

5. Threat of new entry: How easy is it for newcomers to enter the organization's market?

3. Forecast

Considering the factors above, determine the company's value through financial forecasting. While almost certainly to become a moving target influenced by the five forces, a forecast can assign initial anticipated measurable results expected in the plan or ROI: profits/cost of investment.

4. Set the organizational direction of the business

The above research and assessment will help an organization to set goals and priorities. Too often an organization's strategic plan is too broad and over-ambitious. Planners need to ask, "What kind of impact are we seeking to have, and in what time frame?" They need to drill down to objectives that will have the most impact.

5. Create strategic objectives

This next phase of operational planning consists of creating strategic objectives and initiatives. Kaplan and Norton posit in their balanced scorecard methodology that there are four perspectives for consideration in identifying the conditions for success. They are interrelated and must be evaluated simultaneously.

Financial: Such considerations as growing shareholder value, increasing revenue, managing cost, profitability, or financial stability inform strategic initiatives.

Customer-satisfaction: Objectives can be determined by identifying targets related to one or some of the following: value for the cost, best service, increased market share, or providing customers with solutions.

Internal processes such as operational processes and efficiencies, investment in innovation, investment in total quality and performance management, cost reduction, improvement of workplace safety, or streamlining processes.

Learning and growth: Organizations must ask: Are initiatives in place in terms of human capital and learning and growth to sustain change? Objectives may include employee retention, productivity, building high-performing teams, or creating a pipeline for future leaders.

6. Align with key stakeholders

It's a team effort. The success of the plan is in direct proportion to the organization's commitment to inform and engage the entire workforce in strategy execution. People will only be committed to strategy implementation when they're connected to the organization's goals. With everyone pulling in the same direction, cross-functional decision-making becomes easier and more aligned.

7. Begin strategy mapping

A strategy map is a powerful tool for illustrating the cause-effect of those perspectives and connecting them to between 12 and 18 strategic objectives. Since most people are visual learners, the map provides an easy-to-understand diagram for everyone in the organization creating shared knowledge at all levels.

8. Determine strategic initiatives

Following the development of strategic objectives, strategic initiatives are determined. These are the actions the organization will take to reach those objectives. They may relate initiatives related to factors such as scope, budget, raising brand awareness, product development, and employee training.

9. Benchmark performance measures and analysis

Strategic initiatives inform SMART goals to which metrics are assigned to evaluate performance. These measures cascade from senior management to management to front-line workers. At this stage, the task is to create goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based informing the operational plan.

Benchmarks are established against so that performance can be measures, and a time frame is created. Key performance indicators (KPI's) are assigned based on organizational goals. These indicators align workers' performance and productivity with long-term strategic objectives.

10. Performance evaluation

Assessment of whether the plan has been successful. It measures activities and progress toward objectives and allows for the creation of improved plans and objectives in order to improve overall performance.

Think of strategic planning as a circular process beginning and ending with evaluation. Adjust a plan as necessary. The pace at which review of the plan is necessary may be once a year for many organizations or quarterly for organizations in rapidly evolving industries.

Prioritizing the strategic planning process

The strategic planning meeting may have a reputation for being just another to-do, but it might be time to take a second look. With the right action plan and a little strategic thinking, you can reinvigorate your business environment and start planning for success.

It's that time to get excited about the future again.

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Strategic Planning: A 10-Step Planning Process

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Time for the strategic planning meeting? Read this first. Learn what strategic planning is, and how to do it so it makes a difference for your company.

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HBR: Coaching Your Team as a Collective Makes It Stronger

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HBR: Coaching Your Team as a Collective Makes It Stronger

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Teams are the engine of the corporate machine. They bring together diverse sets of skills to solve problems, innovate, and execute strategy. They're also where the work experience is shaped, and where culture is experienced real time. Teams generate opportunities for newer employees to learn and help solve problems, and for more senior employees to share their knowledge and leverage their experience.

Despite all of this, most management systems continue to focus on individual employees. This is particularly true of coaching, which until recently has been considered primarily a one-on-one practice designed to deliver better individual performance and job satisfaction. There's nothing wrong with that - good individual coaching is an immensely valuable management skill and, when done well, has elevated performance of many individuals. But no matter how effective employees are on their own, they can only contribute to the real power of the collective if their managers provide them with quality support and coaching as a group.

A Team-Based Approach

Leaders can close this gap by embracing the practice of team coaching, which shifts the focus from individual performance to collective impact. In this environment, a leader's role is to support the team as an organic unit, providing support and guidance, setting routines and practices, and creating constant opportunities for group learning.

The team-coaching approach encourages team members to go beyond their roles and understand one another's strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations. Members are encouraged to build stronger relationships themselves, not just one-on-one with their manager. They're also challenged to sharpen their collaboration skills, to hone their ability to collectively take ownership of and solve business challenges, and to address any team-related issues that may arise. The approach creates an environment of agency and accountability, with a healthy balance between challenges and support.

In our work as educators and practitioners, we've studied, led, and worked with teams using the tools and techniques of team coaching. Below are the three we've found to be the most important for fostering accelerated learning and successful outcomes.

Problem-based coaching.

There's a natural instinct among team leaders to step in and take over as problems and challenges arise. But in a team-coaching environment, leaders treat problems and challenges as opportunities for real-world learning and growth that all team members can - and have to - take advantage of.

One place that employs this approach effectively is the Osler Internal Medicine Training program at Johns Hopkins, where, from day one, first-year doctors are expected to "own the patient experience" as they make their rounds, with the more-experienced physicians on the team serving as their guides and coaches. It's a mandatory arrangement: With a first-year doctor at "the point of the wedge," everybody discusses and assesses the situation, provides perspectives, and proposes solutions. The most senior doctor on the team listens in, finding out what team members know and asking questions - and, of course, making sure that everybody's assumptions and decisions are sound. Although this approach requires a little more time and energy up-front than having the senior doctor simply step in to solve problems, the long-term benefits - accelerated learning, increased confidence, team spirit, a collective investment in the work - are substantial.

Coach, don't tell.

A second and related leadership technique is based on the Socratic-method of teaching: Team leaders use questions, not answers, to invite and shape how team members understand situations and solve problems. It takes restraint and practice to learn how to formulate questions that prompt insights and shift thinking, but when leaders have mastered this skill, it can become a powerful management technique.

In employing this approach, it can be useful for leaders to develop a list of questions to ask. For instance: "What have you tried thus far?" "What's working? What's not?" "Is there a different way we could frame the problem?" "Do you have all the data?" "What assumptions are you bringing to the problem?" "Who does this well? What would she do?"

When team members respond to these questions, leaders often gain immediate and important insights into how well their teams understand the work, and where additional support may be required. We've worked with several client organizations and executive-leadership teams that that have employed this approach very successfully. "Not only does practicing this method deepen team learning around specific customer challenges," a manager at a leading professional-services firm told us after using the approach, "it focuses the whole team on exploring issues more thoroughly, possibly unearthing previously overlooked errors and incorrect assumptions."

Treat both successes and failures as opportunities to learn.

This approach transforms the work dynamic. When team members understand that successes and failures are both considered opportunities to learn in a no-blame environment, they become more willing to test the boundaries of what's possible, to challenge assumptions, and to admit when things have gone wrong. This makes it easier to learn and pivot from mistakes, which in turn enables faster and cheaper failures, and bigger breakthroughs.

For this approach to work for teams, all members need to be given the chance to contribute, because some are likely to notice details and patterns of behavior that others are blind to. It can take time to expose those details and patterns, because they can be buried several levels down in the ingrained thinking and behavior of an organization. So another key to this message is to encourage everybody to repeatedly ask the question "Why?"

The U.S. Special Forces have successfully adopted this approach. After every mission, they conduct an after-action review (AAR), during which team members are invited to provide their perspective on everything that went right and wrong, without assigning any blame, and then before their next mission they conduct a pre-action review (PAR), during which they consider how what they've learned in previous AARs might be applied to the new mission. (For more on AARs, see "A Better After-Action Review," by Angus Fletcher, Preston B. Cline, and Matthew Hoffman.)

* * *

Teams today are having to learn how to deliver results in shorter cycles with fewer resources. They need leaders who can help them learn collectively from their successes and failures, optimize their performance, and adapt quickly to changing demands. Leaders who adopt the approaches to team coaching that we've outlined in this article are well positioned to achieve this, and in so doing can successfully differentiate their businesses by drawing on the remarkable power of the collective.

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Coaching Your Team as a Collective Makes It Stronger

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Until recently, coaching was considered primarily a one-on-one practice. But no matter how effective employees are on their own, they can only contribute to the real power of the collective if their managers provide them with coaching as a group.

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TedTalk: There's More to Life Than Being Happy

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TedTalk: There's More to Life Than Being Happy

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Happiness comes and goes, says writer Emily Esfahani Smith, but having meaning in life -- serving something beyond yourself and developing the best within you -- gives you something to hold onto.

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Our culture is obsessed with happiness, but what if there’s a more fulfilling path? Happiness comes and goes, says writer Emily Esfahani Smith, but having meaning in life -- serving something beyond yourself and developing the best within you -- gives you something to hold onto. Learn more about the difference between being happy and having meaning as Smith offers four pillars of a meaningful life.

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TED: How to Build a Company Where the Best Ideas Win

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TED: How to Build a Company Where the Best Ideas Win

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

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Ray Dalio: How to build a company where the best ideas win

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What if you knew what your coworkers really thought about you and what they were really like? Ray Dalio makes the business case for using radical transparency and algorithmic decision-making to create an idea meritocracy where people can speak up and say what they really think -- even calling out the boss is fair game.

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TED: How to Turn a Group of Strangers Into a Team

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TED: How to Turn a Group of Strangers Into a Team

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How to turn a group of strangers into a team

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Business school professor Amy Edmondson studies “teaming,” where people come together quickly (and often temporarily) to solve new, urgent or unusual problems. Recalling stories of teamwork on the fly, such as the incredible rescue of 33 miners trapped half a mile underground in Chile in 2010, Edmondson shares the elements needed to turn a group of strangers into a quick-thinking team that can nimbly respond to challenges.

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The LeaderLab powered by LifeLabs Learning

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The LeaderLab powered by LifeLabs Learning

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HBR Explainer: Porter’s Five Forces (that shape strategy)

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HBR Explainer: Porter’s Five Forces (that shape strategy)

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The competitive forces that shape strategy — in under two minutes.

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Why do we love our favorite stories? Do they need a beginning, middle and end, and a character who changes by the conclusion? Masters of storytelling explore new answers to age-old questions of the craft.

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Why do we love our favorite stories? Do they need a beginning, middle and end, and a character who changes by the conclusion? Masters of storytelling explore new answers to age-old questions of the craft.

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Vulnerability in Leadership: Why Being Human is Good for Business

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HRDigest: Vulnerability in Leadership - Why Being Human is Good for Business 

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HRDigest: Vulnerability in Leadership - Why Being Human is Good for Business 

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Vulnerability in Leadership: Why Being Human is Good for Business

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In a world where leaders are often expected to be infallible, vulnerability can seem like a risky proposition. But what if vulnerability is actually the key to building trust and driving change? What if vulnerable leadership can help you achieve your goals and inspire your team?

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A company replaced all of its managers with coaches. Employees became 20% more productive–and much happier | Fortune

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Fortune: A Company Replaced All of Its Managers with Coaches. Employees Became 20% More Productive & Much Happier

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Fortune: A Company Replaced All of Its Managers with Coaches. Employees Became 20% More Productive & Much Happier

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A company replaced all of its managers with coaches. Employees became 20% more productive–and much happier | Fortune

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Our managers were all replaced with coaches, with a ratio of one coach per six employees.

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When Your Boss Gives You Bad Feedback, Badly

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HBR: When Your Boss Gives You Bad Feedback, Badly

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HBR: When Your Boss Gives You Bad Feedback, Badly

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When Your Boss Gives You Bad Feedback, Badly

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It’s difficult to manage your feelings when getting feedback that feels too harsh, overly nice, or somehow dishonest. We all struggle with feedback, so extend a little grace to yourself for having strong emotions, and to the other person for initiating a difficult conversation. The authors present t…