Plan Resonate Management Consulting

Growth management consulting is similar to strategic planning, although there are important differences, and I’ll use those differences to highlight what I can do for your business.

Plan Resonate provides practical and insightful management advice to businesses and non-profit organizations. Clients benefit from knowledge, experience, and techniques in using advanced management tools.

Commercial clients range from small scale social entrepreneurs (Xtracycle) to one of the largest software manufacturers in the world (SAP). Non-profit clients are typically community focused and working to resolve issues related to sustainable development (People’s Grocery in Oakland, and Rudolph Steiner Foundation in San Francisco).

Plan Resonate’s services emphasize the importance of “strategic design”; that is, all services are implemented as part of a broader effort to align managers around a shared understanding of strategy. By taking this approach, strategic and tactical discussions become a useful component in daily operations. Consider this approach in contrast to esoteric strategy reports, useless vision statements, or isolated planning retreats. Plan Resonate clients are challenged to make a practice of strategic thinking. The beneficial outcomes of such a practice are too varied and numerous to list. In a general sense, Plan Resonate helps clients to:

• Expand internal capabilities
• Gain market share
• Improve profitability
• Enhance program efficiency and effectiveness.

Plan Resonate is working to help our clients grow. We call it growth management consulting. Growth management consulting is about leading clients to enact meaningful, positive, and lasting improvements.

Often Plan Resonate services are defined around departmental and project specific goals. The services though are not delivered as boilerplate information products. Rather, services are performed with a constant view as to how the project can best function in the context of the organization at large. In other words, working with Plan Resonate is a way to (A.) achieve project goals, and (B.) promote learning and growth that goes beyond the scope of the specific project. This is why Plan Resonate services are described as a process. Together, we create a vision for how each project fits into a bigger picture.

How big is the picture? Where do you fit into the picture? Plan Resonate will offer advice, but ultimately those types of major decisions are best made by you. Why? The reason is simple - you know more about your business than Plan Resonate ever will.

Traditional Strategy is Vision and Plan

We can separate traditional strategy into two types of information: the vision, and the plan. Some of my projects are focused exclusively on the vision, while other projects have been focused on the plan document as an end in itself. This is strategic planning, it’s what planners do.

There is an important difference between growth management consulting and planning. Whereas planners focus on the vision, and the plan, growth management emphasizes implementation (action). A strategic planning document isn’t very helpful when it’s buried in a dusty gig on a forgotten hard drive. With the growth management approach, you and your team will implement the vision and plan tactics on a daily basis.

The “Living Business Plan”

A “living plan” is in regular use and a near-constant state of revision. How often do you think about your business plan? How often to you update, edit, re-organize that plan? With the growth management approach, your vision and plans can a dynamic source of real-time, collaborative learning.

Growth Management is Vision + Plan + Action

The main advantage of the growth management approach is that it encompasses the vision (setting goals), the plan (documenting tactics), AND the actions (daily implementation of the vision and plan). Strategy and planning will become increasingly relevant to your team’s daily decision making. In contrast, consider a traditional planning workshop. Workshops are intense and infrequent. They’re effective in many ways, and you can use them to create excellent plans. Unfortunately, those plans are often abandoned, forgotten in the course of our busy schedules.

I argue that it’s better to increase the frequency of the planning cycle, while decreasing the intensity. Open the planning process to a broader group of participants, thereby decreasing the net impact on each person’s schedule and increasing the diversity of perspectives. Treat planning as a continuous and asynchronous event. Repetition is simple and effect, use it.

Repetition is simple and effective, use it.

Action

Planning should favor action and experimentation. Bring the planning process down to earth. Strategy does not need to be an isolated exercise in the hands of the few. One way to increase the amount of implementation in a planning process is to shift the venue of the process toward venues that are more conducive to work.

A constant planning process will support a large and rapidly evolving number of work tasks. This work flow is part of keeping the planning process on the top of our minds. The regular time commitment from each team member can be low. You and your team will set the appropriate pace for change.

Your Plan Should Be a Living Document

Static business plans are obsolete. The more implementation in the planning process, the richer the learning experience. Try it, and you’ll see how planning conversations become relevant to your daily operations.

If you’d like to talk about it further, call me at (415)821-5861 or email jeff@planresonate.com.