 Chapter 17. Strategic Planning Inside this chapter, Introduction to Strategic Planning. History of Strategic Planning. Traditional Management versus SA&D. Strategic Alignment and Deployment. SA&D. Purpose. Parts of SA&D. Mission and vision statements. Developing a Balanced Scorecard. Balanced Scorecard. Strategy Map. Access Current Situation. Identify Priorities and State and Goals. State Objectives. Track Metrics. Identify Tasks. Impact of Strategic Planning. Senior NCO Effectiveness. Mission Effectiveness. Master Sergeant Ali is the new superintendent of the Logistics Readiness Squadron. As the new leader, he wants to restructure and align his unit's mission with that of the MAGCOM. As it is now, every team lead has their own team focusing on different priorities. With the team leads giving mixed messages, team members aren't sure what is really important to the organization. Master Sergeant Ali wants to develop a powerful team that is focused on a common vision so they all communicate the same message. Unfortunately, he doesn't know where to begin. What should he do? Strategic Planning is a process by which we can envision the future and develop the necessary procedures and operations to influence and achieve that future. Clark Crouch. Upon completion of this chapter, you should be able to Terminal Cognitive Objective. Comprehend Strategic Planning Concepts and or their impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. Terminal Cognitive Samples of Behavior. 1. Identify Strategic Planning Concepts and or their impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. 2. Illustrate Strategic Planning Concepts and or their impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. 3. Predict the impact of Strategic Planning Concepts on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. Effective Objective. Value Strategic Planning and its positive impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. Effective Samples of Behavior. 1. Enthusiastically dedicate yourself to read and listen to all material about Strategic Planning and its impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. 2. Voluntarily complete all coursework related to Strategic Planning and its impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. 3. Openly accept Strategic Planning and its positive impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. 4. Willingly develop a preference for Strategic Planning and its positive impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. 5. Strive toward a commitment to apply Strategic Planning because of its positive impact on Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. Occasionally every organization has to make important decisions. These decisions can affect the entire direction of the organization for years into the future. Without a Strategic Framework you wouldn't know where you were going or why you were going there. Strategic Planning provides consistent direction across all Air Force portfolios and brings year-to-year coherency to plans and programs. Planning helps assure that an organization remains relevant and responsive to the needs of its community and contributes to organizational stability and growth. It provides the basis for monitoring progress and for assessing results and impact. In your capacity as Senior Enlisted Leaders and Managers you are probably involved with multiple processes that may or may not strategically align with the priorities of your unit, higher headquarters or even the Air Force. Are you adding value to each level of the Force structure or are you spending precious time on non-value added activities? This chapter begins with an introduction to Strategic Planning. Here you'll create a foundation by examining a brief history and learn the difference between Traditional Management and Strategic Alignment and Deployment, SA&D. Next you'll transition further into SA&D where you'll examine the parts of SA&D structure. Then you'll focus on building an SA&D Strategy Map. This includes conducting an SWOT analysis and identifying what the end state should be. Finally this chapter will end with a discussion on how Strategic Planning impacts Senior NCO and Mission Effectiveness. Introduction to Strategic Planning. Strategic Planning is an organizational management activity that sets priorities, focuses energy and resources, and strengthens operations. It ensures that everyone is working toward common goals designed to establish agreement around intended outcomes and results. Strategic Planning helps assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. Strategic Planning is a future focused, disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it. Effective Strategic Planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress toward those goals, but also lets you know if your efforts were successful. In this section you'll begin with a brief history of Strategic Planning and close by differentiating between traditional management and strategic alignment and deployment. Senior NCOs must understand Strategic Planning and how the lack thereof impacts the organization's daily operations. Let's begin with the history. History of Strategic Planning. The history of Strategic Planning begins in the military. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, strategy is the science of planning and directing large-scale military operations and maneuvering forces in the most advantageous positions prior to actual engagement with the enemy. Although our understanding of strategy as applied to management has transformed, one element remains unchanged. Aim to achieve not just mission completion at all costs, but for a progression towards a superior and necessary future state. According to Wall and Wall, early models of formal strategic planning reflected the hierarchical values and linear systems of traditional organizations. Undertaken by elite planning functions at the top of the organization, its structure was highly vertical and time-bound. Planners would set aside a certain period to analyze the situation and decide on a course of action. Once this was finished, the actual work of implementation, considered a separate and discrete process, would begin. Although individual definitions of strategy vary between authors, traditionally theorists considered planning an essential part of the organizational strategy. Henry Minnsberg, the author of The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, suggests that strategic planning in organizations originated in the 1950s and was very popular and widespread between the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, when people believed it was the answer for all problems and corporate America was obsessed with strategic planning. Following that boom, people cast strategic planning aside for over a decade. The 1990s brought the revival of strategic planning as a process with particular benefits and particular contexts. Francis Gouyart's planning theory, The Day the Music Died, takes us into the subsequent newer models of strategic planning, which focuses on adaptability to change, flexibility, the importance of strategic thinking, and organizational learning. Strategic agility is becoming more important than the strategy itself because the organization's ability to succeed has more to do with its ability to transform itself continuously than whether it has the right strategy. Being strategically agile enables organizations to transform their strategy depending on the changes in their environment. As the environment within the Air Force continues to change, e.g. reduction in force and sequestration, it is increasingly important to focus on our strategic agility and the impact on mission accomplishment. One way this is accomplished is through strategic alignment and deployment, SA&D, which is a component of Air Force strategic planning and guidance. Traditional management versus SA&D. What makes a good leader or manager? For many, it is someone who can inspire and get the most from their team. Leaders and managers are successful due to a combination of personal characteristics and they have differing ways of dealing with their team members. Some are strict and like to be in complete control, while others are more relaxed and allow for more autonomy. Whatever approach is predominantly used, it will be vital to the success of the organization. The traditional style of management is very hierarchical, organized, and disciplined. This management style strictly follows the direct chain of command and is derived from the power of the position. Not many, if any, soft skills are required. Soft skills are personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. SA&D is the method used to ensure every member of Air Force organizations are working effectively towards the same goals identified by senior leadership. It is a product of annual strategic and performance planning. Traditional management includes one-way communication, management after the fact, individual skill-orientated, fails to eliminate chronic problems, used as an intimidation weapon, lax linkage. Strategic alignment and deployment includes two-way communication, immediate self-correction, collective skills process-oriented, focus on problem-solving root cause, used to improve and share information, links to all levels. The 2015 Air Force Strategic Master Plan develops overarching, long-range strategic guidance that advances the strategic vectors and imperatives set by America's Air Force, a call to the future to provide a strategic framework that will shape the Air Force's future. It provides consistent direction across all Air Force portfolios and brings year-to-year coherency to our plans and programs. MAJCOMs and WINGS are currently or beginning to use SA&D to build their mission, vision, goals and objectives that drive the organization to achieve and focus its mission. The Air Force's ability to continue to adapt and respond faster than our potential adversaries is the greatest challenge we face over the next 30 years. We must pursue a strategically agile force to unlock the innovative potential resident in our airmen and turn a possible vulnerability into an enduring advantage. Now that you have a brief history of strategic planning, it will assist you as you continue to progress throughout this chapter. Although it began in the military, many business models have developed over the years. In today's ever-changing environment, it is imperative to focus on our strategic agility effort to remain the world's premier Air Force. Strategic alignment and deployment helps ensure we provide this shared vision to all. Please scan the QR code on page 4 to learn more about the strategic master plan. Strategic alignment and deployment. Purpose. As you now know, SA&D is the method used to ensure all members of the organization are working effectively towards the same goals identified by senior leadership. Deploying this method to the appropriate level requires clear communication of the SA&D process to all who are involved in its execution. The goals and objectives are measurable, therefore must be written in clear, understandable language. The SA&D process is designed to align the enterprise to achieve the priorities, goals, objectives, metrics, and tasks impacting the entire organization. Provide a common standard methodology to deploy metrics and action plans throughout the enterprise. Communicate commander's intent relative to goals, objectives, metrics, and action plans. Assign accountability and responsibility at all levels. Ensure alignment throughout the organization. Concentrate the organization on high leverage outputs. Form a disparate group of individuals into a team with a common goal. Even the best plans and programs will not be successful if all parties and processes, no matter how small, aren't focused on the same overriding goal. The ultimate objective of SA&D is to create collaborative links across all areas of an organization. The main goal is not only to define the mission, vision, goals, and objectives for each organization, but also to focus on identifying potential high-value initiatives. The key to identifying these high-value initiatives is to look at what administration policies and mandates drive your organization. Strategic alignment and deployment is as much about the process as the result. Simply put, SA&D is a planning process. To better understand it, let's look at the individual parts to gain better insight as to how it works. Parts of SA&D. Strategy. Per the Air Force strategic plan, strategy is about choices, what we choose to prioritize, our action in support of our priorities, the order in which we take them, and how we allocate resources against our priorities to support the nation's objectives. As you can see, the Air Force strategic plan emphasizes choices. Every day, as senior NCOs, you make choices on where to focus your efforts, e.g., manpower and allocating funds. Failing to provide a well-communicated strategy at all levels of management can create confusion and undermine organizational motivation and focus. The alignment of a strategic vision to employee productivity is a key contributor to the success of an organization. This alignment encourages and stimulates employees' creativity so that they can perform more effectively to support the organizational goals and objectives. Alignment. This piece of the process is the strategy communication link for the organization and enables improvement at every level. It is an execution tool, not a strategic planning tool. Alignment is the translation of the vision into measurable results. It involves a clear set of strategic objectives and vision translated into day-to-day action and creates an environment for innovation by the process of gap analysis, where we are versus where we want to be, and continuous improvement. SA&D alignment is achieved through a cascading strategy from the top down. Cascading process. Catch ball. The purpose of cascading strategy is to communicate, align, and validate HQ, NAF, wing, and intra-wing strategies. This process develops a strategic line of sight between commander's strategic priorities and airmen's responsibilities and accountabilities. Have you heard of this strategy before? If not, it may be time for you to begin learning about your organization's strategy process. The chart on page six is taken from the AFSO21 playbook and depicts how the cascading process works. The green arrows indicate the cascading of goals from one level to another. This is an important step where intense dialogue takes place to make sure intent and direction is clear. The yellow arrows indicate the catch ball process. Catch ball is a participative approach to decision making. It promotes workforce feedback and continuous dialogue. The analogy of tossing a ball back and forth emphasizes the interactive nature of policy deployment. To be effective, the process requires intense dialogue to ensure feasibility and buy-in. It is important to note that depending on the organization, there can be multiple parent units, e.g., Air Force, and combatant commands. Proper alignment is necessary to maximize results and minimize efforts of non-critical projects. There must be sanity checks of mapping strategies from bottom to top. Senior NCO involvement is vital to ensuring appropriate alignment. Think about it. For the most part, you are the one leading those at the tactical level. If the strategy does not convert into tactical application, you may be wasting valuable resources and time. Leaders must define and communicate a clear strategy to be successful. Mission and vision statements are a summary of the organization's strategy that is easy to communicate. This leads us to the first step of the SA&D process, which is building and aligning organizational mission and vision statements. Mission and vision statements. Many organizations develop mission and vision statements. The downside to that is few organizations develop well-structured and meaningful strategies. Let's dissect the proper mission and vision statement development process beginning with mission first. To allow for a cascading alignment of SA&D, a mission statement must first be developed. A mission statement is the purpose of the organization and the very reason it exists. An effective mission statement must give reasons for the organization to exist over the next three years and beyond. Best describe the unified mission of the organization. Indicate how unique and different the organization is from other similar institutions. Here is one example of how PACAF and two subunits would build their mission statements to align with the Air Force mission statement. Air Force. The mission of the United States Air Force is to fly, fight, and win in air, space, and cyberspace. PACAF. Provide Pacific Command integrated expeditionary Air Force capabilities to defend the homeland, promote stability, dissuade and deter aggression, and swiftly defeat enemies. Fifth Air Force. Serves as the HQ PACAF forward element in Japan, conducting activities to include maximizing partnership capabilities and promoting bilateral defense cooperation. Fifth Air Force also serves as the air component to U.S. forces Japan. Thirty-fifth Fighter Wing. Defend U.S. interests in the Pacific and assist in the defense of Japan with sustained forward presence, worldwide deployable forces, and focused mission support. Did you notice the cascading effect? They aren't the same yet they support each other. One of the most simple mission statements in the Air Force was found at Dover Air Force Base. They simply used one word to justify their existence. Deliver. How easy is that to remember? It says exactly why they exist and emphasizes their purpose in one word. Also, it shows a direct link to their MAGCOM. AMC's mission is to provide global air mobility. Right effects. Right place. Right time. Vision. Vision is a statement of an ideal state of being or existence in the future that is inspiring and empowering. It creates a context for the process of planning a future for the organization. To be effective, a vision should be grounded in reality or organization's present situation. Should create some problems for the organization. Stakeholders, those with an investment in the organization, must be able to see themselves or their interests represented in the vision. Should invite and inspire people to want to achieve it. The key message here is that status quo is not a viable alternative and the vision should bring about change. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision should create unity of purpose for all the organization. A vision should create unity of purpose for all in the organization. When designed right, it helps determine the strategic priorities and a context for objectives so that their relationship to the organization is clear. Your vision statement should be a snapshot of the future as you want it to be. Here is an example of AETC's vision aligning with a cascading effect. Air Force. The United States Air Force will be a trusted and reliable joint partner with our sister services known for integrity in all our activities, including supporting the joint mission first and foremost. We will provide compelling air, space and cyber capabilities for use by the combatant commanders. We will excel as stewards of all Air Force resources in service to the American people while providing precise and reliable global vigilance, reach and power for the nation. AETC. Deliver unrivaled air, space and cyber space education and training. Air University. Be the intellectual and leadership center of the Air Force. Barnes Center for Enlisted Education. Develop airmen with a warrior ethos and a passion for learning in the cause of freedom. Strategic vision level leaders continue to develop their knowledge of Air Force institutional competencies to improve their ability to advise senior leaders, participate in top level decision making, draft policies, manage career fields and lead far-reaching programs. AFI 36-2618. Admittedly, the Air Force vision is pretty wordy, but it needs to be to project a future state for its many organizations. As stated in the beginning, many organizations develop mission and vision statements. For them to guide mission effectiveness, they must be well developed and meaningful strategies to get from point A to point B. After all, a vision without a plan is just a dream. This is why a strategy map is vital to achieving your future state. Developing a Balanced Scorecard. Managing in a contemporary world has become increasingly more complex. It has evolved from a manufacturing setting with little to steer managers but a single financial indicator to managing a greater percentage of intangible assets through numerous leading and lagging indicators. The industry has also evolved from centrally located and managed to decentralized multinational companies. The Balanced Scorecard, BSC, a strategic management tool, was developed in response to these changes. This management tool has proved successful throughout the last decade. A Scorecard is an important tool that enables an organization to align business activities with its vision and strategy, gain buy-in from key stakeholders, improve internal and external communications, and monitor its performance against strategic goals. Translating an organization's mission and vision into a more tactical plan can be an intimidating process. Utilizing a Balanced Scorecard and developing an effective strategy map can help your organization move forward in a meaningful, strategic way. Without such a tool, you couldn't effectively communicate your strategy to other members in your organization. Unfortunately, in some organizations, leaders are trying to do just that. When attempting to implement their strategies, they only give members limited descriptions of what they should do and why those tasks are important. Without clearer and more detailed information, it's no wonder that many of these companies have failed in executing their strategies. After all, how can people carry out a plan that they don't fully understand? Organizations need tools for communicating their strategy, the process, and the systems that will help them implement that strategy. Balanced Scorecard and strategy mapping concepts are tools that enable communicating strategy. Let us begin by covering the Balanced Scorecard. The BSC is a strategy management system for establishing and communicating an organization's mission, vision, and strategy mapped customers, stakeholders, and employees. In simple terms, it is used for aligning the day-to-day work to the strategy. The BSC normally displays metrics identifying whether or not objectives are being met. Based on alignment, it is a strategy execution tool, not a creation tool. The intent of the BSC is to have an organization see how balanced it is or is not, and only focuses on the key perspectives it has chosen to align its strategies with. When fully deployed, the Balanced Scorecard transforms strategic planning from an academic exercise into the nerve center of an enterprise. Professor Robert Kaplan, an accounting professor at Harvard University, and Dr. David Norton, a consultant from the Boston area, developed the BSC. These researchers led a study of a dozen companies to explore new methods of performance measurement with a hypothesis that traditional financial measures of performance were ineffective for successful management. From this study, the BSC was born with a scorecard balanced through careful selection and implementation of four perspectives. Perspectives. The BSC provides leadership with the instrumentation they need to navigate to future success. The scorecard measures organizational performance across four balanced perspectives. Learning and growth, internal business processes, customers, and financial. The BSC enables organizations to track financial results while simultaneously monitoring process in building the capabilities and acquiring the intangible assets they need for future growth. The learning and growth perspective. This perspective includes employee training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and corporate self-improvement. In a knowledge worker organization, people are the main resource. In the current climate of rapid technological change, it is becoming necessary for knowledge workers to be in a continuous learning mode. Metrics can be put into place to guide managers in focusing training funds where they can help the most. In any case, learning and growth constitute the essential foundation for success of any knowledge worker organization. Kaplan and Norton emphasize that learning is more than training. It also includes things like mentors and tutors within the organization as well. That ease of communication among workers allows them to readily get help on a problem when it is needed. The business process perspective. This perspective refers to internal business processes. Metrics based on this perspective allow the managers to know how well their business is running and whether its products and services conform to customer requirements. The mission. These metrics have to be carefully designed by those who know these processes almost intimately. With our unique missions, these are not something that can be developed by outside consultants. The customer perspective. Recent management philosophy has shown an increasing realization of the importance of customer focus and customer satisfaction in any business. These are leading indicators. If customers are not satisfied, they will eventually find other suppliers that will meet their needs. Poor performance from this perspective is a leading indicator of future decline, even if the current financial picture may look good. In developing metrics for satisfaction, customers should be analyzed in terms of the kinds of customers and the kinds of processes for which we are providing a product or service to those customer groups. The financial perspective. Kaplan and Norton do not disregard the traditional need for financial data. Timely and accurate funding data will always be a priority and managers will do whatever necessary to provide it. In fact, often there is more than enough handling and processing of financial data. But the point is that the current emphasis on finances alone leads to the unbalanced situation with regard to other perspectives. There is perhaps a need to include additional financial related data such as risk assessment and cost benefit data in this category. Kaplan and Norton introduced the importance of a balanced scorecard BSC by providing the following example of traditional management systems where managers focus and make decisions based solely on evaluation of financial factors through a conversation with a pilot. Question. I'm surprised to see you operating the plane with only a single instrument. What does it measure? Answer. Airspeed. I'm really working on airspeed this flight. Question. That's good. Airspeed certainly seems important. But what about altitude? Wouldn't an altimeter be helpful? Answer. I worked on altitude my last few flights and I've gotten pretty good at it. Now I have to concentrate on proper airspeed. Question. But I notice you don't even have a fuel gauge. Wouldn't that be helpful? Answer. You're right. Fuel is significant. But I can't concentrate on doing too many things well at the same time. So on this flight I'm focusing on airspeed. Once I get to be excellent at airspeed as well as altitude, I intend to concentrate on fuel consumption on the next set of flights. This example illustrated that a qualified pilot would not fly without the appropriate number and type of indicators in an aircraft nor should an executive operate a company without anything less than an appropriate number and consistency of guiding indicators. The selection of the right objectives is crucial to a company's BSC success. Commonly, executives who have historical knowledge and know what areas of the company must succeed in order to be profitable meet to discuss and select their BSC's objectives and performance measures. Objectives or their performance measures must be quantifiable. Measurements provide managers the opportunity to know where they are and establish goals as to where they want to go. Under the BSC framework, there are two reasons why objectives or performance measures require quantification. First, managers sometimes choose vague terms to identify an objective. Selecting quantifiable objectives or performance measures when a vague objective is named provides employees at all levels with the ability to clearly understand the objective. This permits all employees to focus their energies and day-to-day activities on the goal. Secondly, quantified objectives or performance measures permit management to question and test their hypothesized cause and effect relationships. Let's look at another example. A transportation department hypothesized that by reducing average wait time at key bus stations during rush hours, the linked objective, provide convenient travel, would improve. Anyone who views this scorecard could understand that one way to improve the objective, effectively cover rush hour demands, is to reduce average wait times. Associating an objective with a quantified measure permits employees to understand which part of their day-to-day operations to focus on improving, to help meet the company's strategic goal. Another critical part of the BSC, a strategy map, is a necessary tool used to align priorities of different domains and to help balance the tangible and intangible elements in the overall strategic plan. Strategy map. A strategy map is a plan to move an organization from their current state to a more desirable future state. A successful strategic plan is dependent upon an honest assessment of current status of the organization. Strategy maps help you to ensure your strategy will be more successful because they help you to capture, communicate, and manage your strategy more effectively. Building a strategy map helps lead the organization through development of a way ahead and explain how the strategy will bring about necessary change within the organization. Now it's time for you to increase your understanding of how to create your own strategy map. Let's begin by assessing the current situation. Assess the current situation. Assessing the current situation involves identifying performance gaps and opportunities, comparing current performance with last year's plan, and checking the performance of critical processes, e.g. is training and development working, is morale up or down. A SWOT analysis is a tool that can help with assessing the current situation. A SWOT analysis is used to evaluate your organization's strengths and weaknesses from an internal standpoint. Internal means activities within the organization. It also allows you to assess opportunities and threats external to the organization. To increase effectiveness, gather your team and brainstorm on each of these areas. A realistic recognition of the weaknesses and threats that exist is the first step to countering them with a robust set of strategies that build upon strengths and opportunities. Once you see where the gaps exist, you can begin to focus on priorities, end states, and goals. Please refer to the SWOT analysis chart on page 10. Identify priorities, end state, and goals. Priorities Priorities have a significant impact on mission achievement. They should consist of three to five statements that identify major strategic focus areas and should emphasize what needs to be changed or improved in order to excel in executing the organization's mission. They should be customer focused and can be directed at customers internal or external to the organization. Some examples of internal and external customers are shown in the following illustration. Please refer to the illustration on page 11. The 2015 Air Force Strategic Plan identifies five priorities, which should be well known to most. Presently, these provide the foundation for aligning Air Force-wide activities and investments. Provide effective 21st century deterrence. The nuclear mission remains the clear priority of Air Force leaders, but the Air Force also offers many additional capabilities to deter a wide range of actors. Maintain a robust and flexible global intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance ISR capability. The Air Force will employ agile multi-domain solutions to detect, characterize, deter, and defeat adversaries. This requires an agile, coordinated multi-domain ISR approach that provides commanders with multiple options. Ensure a full spectrum-capable, high-end focused force. The Air Force must focus on the skills and capabilities that deliver freedom of maneuver and allow decisive action in highly contested spaces. However, we must retain the ability to succeed in low-intensity conflict. Pursue a multi-domain approach to our five core missions. To achieve the most effective solutions across the spectrum of military operations, we will increasingly integrate and employ capabilities operating in or through the cyberspace and space domains in addition to air capabilities. Continue the pursuit of game-changing technologies. We must continue to pursue radical improvements in technology that, when combined with new approaches and organizational changes, expand or maintain asymmetric advantages over adversaries. This requires the identification and harvesting of potential breakthroughs in thinking that might amplify the enduring effects that strengthen our advantages in air, space, and cyberspace. As these priorities are redefined, the rest of the Air Force will need to align to the new priorities. Adaptability is vital to your organization staying relevant. To meet this priority, you first need to define an end-state. An end-state is similar to a mini-vision statement. It connects the dots of where you are today versus where you want to be for a particular priority. It helps communicate bounds of each priority, paints a picture of the outcome, and gives a typical time period of one to three years. When working through your strategy map, it is important to start with the end in mind. An example end-state would be, deliver a high-qualified expeditionary focused force to the combatant commanders. For this desired end-state to be achieved, goals must be developed. Goals. Goals clarify what must be achieved to realize an end-state and provide a measurable way to let you know if you have successfully accomplished your priorities. These include quantitative metrics like time, percentage, rankings with results to be realized in one to three years. Goals break down into objectives, which involve senior NCOs working with leadership to drive initiatives. Great care needs to be taken to set goals that will inspire the right type of behavior. Often, organizations only set goals they can control, rather than those related to the customer. An example goal might be, decrease deployment equipment issues by 20% in two years. This is a made-up goal, but it gives you an idea of how they are written. Goals usually cannot be achieved by just doing business as usual. Goals further break down into objectives. This is where senior NCOs must work with leadership to drive initiatives. State objectives. Objectives consist of two to three statements that inform members how each priority is accomplished. They give strategic direction on how to execute tasks, initiatives, and process improvements. They should inspire and motivate the workforce to a higher level of performance and drive significant operational change. Objectives should be understandable, executable, relevant, and concise. To increase effectiveness, someone should be assigned to each objective to ensure action is taken and accountability is assigned. A customer-focused example would be, provide effective deployment equipment. If you were the unit deployment manager for your organization, you would align your own objective by examining the effectiveness of your equipment. To measure the objective success, you need to develop metrics that help identify how well you are doing at accomplishing the objectives. Track metrics. Metrics communicate the intent of the objective statement and reflect how the objective is achieved. Measuring the execution and effectiveness of your objectives is crucial. Otherwise, you might discard a solid objective just because you didn't know it was working. Metrics drive behavior, so it is important to develop metrics that are beneficial to the whole organization. Tasks state the tactical actions or deliverables that will positively influence the metrics. This is the area where most strategic plans falter. Most people like the idea of having mission and vision statements and objectives to throw around, but very few go the distance, actually develop meaningful metrics, and measure them to ensure objectives are met. Remember, what gets measured is what gets done. Identify tasks. Tasks are a concise, simple, and understandable action statement consisting of specific deliverables. Their purpose is to support the objectives at a level where target completion dates can be established. They provide the tactical direction and processes to achieve the objectives intended results. Recommend one to three tasks per objective. Tasks identify specific actions or steps to be taken within the short term, 12 months or less. Tracking tasks ensures objectives are met within prescribed timelines and many businesses utilize a balanced scorecard to communicate and measure the execution of their strategy. Now, let's take a look at an example of a strategy map. The strategy map can be found on page 13. At the top of the map, it says mission. Underneath, some questions. Why does the command exist? Who are the command's target customers? Example, provide PACCOM integrated expeditionary air force capabilities to defend the homeland, promote stability, dissuade or deter aggression, and swiftly defeat enemies. From left to right, the columns state. Priority statement. Identifies a major strategic focus up to the next three years, which is necessary to achieve the command's mission. End state describes how we will know the priority has been fully implemented. Goal statement clarifies what strategically must be realized. It includes a one to three year quantifiable stretch target that cannot be achieved just by doing business as usual. Example, priority. Posture our forces. End state. Organized and equipped to support the joint team and successfully execute the national defense strategy for current and future missions with low to moderate risk. Goal. Execute assigned missions and bed down new missions by fiscal year 17. Objective. Communicates what operationally must be accomplished to realize the intent of the priority statement. Recommend two to three objectives per priority. Example, objective. Advocate adequate resources to support new missions and leverage total force integration best practices. One, transition seamlessly to joint basing. Two, investigate opportunities to divest, centralize, regionalize, strategic source, and transform missions in a constrained resource environment. Metrics. Provides leadership with a means to monitor, analyze, and communicate performance so the command can determine if the objective is being successfully implemented. Recommend one to three metrics per objective. Example, one. Best practices identified or implemented. Two, advocacy processes defined. Three, percentage reduction in energy consumption. Tasks. Lists of tactical actions or deliverables that will move the needle on metrics and achieve the desired outcomes of the objective. Recommend three to five tasks per objective. Example, 1.1. Identify capacity needed to bed down new missions. 1.2. Build organizations to optimize active and reserve manpower. 1.3. Ensure timely execution of joint basing implementation plans to meet congressional mandates. 1.4. Eliminate, reduce, restructure contracts to meet fiscal realities. 1.5. Reduce facility footprint slash energy consumption to meet fiscal realities. Many organizations develop mission statements or visions about where they want to go, but few develop a well-structured plan to get there. A balanced scorecard and subsequent strategy map are plans used to move an organization from their current state to a more desirable future state. This section has shown the importance of defining measurable objectives that everyone can understand and how you can develop your own strategy map to achieve organizational goals. As a senior NCO and a leader, you will need these skills not only to build that strategy but to effectively put it into action. Impact of strategic planning. Strategic planning is the systematic process of envisioning a desired future and translating this vision into broadly defined goals or objectives. Your ability to translate the vision while simultaneously defining goals and ensuring objectives are met is no small task. Failure on your part may mean failure to meet a higher level priority or creating a misalignment at a lower level. To help you understand the importance of successful strategic planning, we'll explore senior NCO and mission effectiveness as they relate to these Air Force institutional competencies. Enterprise perspective, managing organizations and resources, leading people and fostering collaborative relationships. Senior NCO effectiveness. Ensuring strategic planning is accomplished requires purposeful communication at all levels. Effective communication can eliminate barriers and help in problem solving. At the same time, communication aids in building stronger workplace relationships, thus increasing productivity. Think about it, if the members of your organization don't understand the organization's vision, then they probably don't understand what's required of them in order to accomplish it. Organizations depend on capable leadership to guide them through unprecedented changes. Translating the vision requires the use of soft skills, listening and understanding. Your subordinates should never be forced to make assumptions because your message was not communicated effectively. Remember the catchball process? It is a participative approach to decision making that promotes workforce feedback and continuous dialogue. To increase your effectiveness, keep your subordinates informed. With an open path of communication, feedback from subordinates may assist you in finding solutions to problems within the organization and help you implement your strategic plan successfully. Institutional competency. Enterprise perspective. Strategic communication. Translating the vision, values, strategy into day-to-day activities and behaviors. Communicating well means your listeners comprehend your words and are able to put them into action. For example, when describing how to implement a new software program, use layman's terms when talking to those who are not computer specialists. Give the information in small, digestible chunks and test understanding before moving on. Also in this lesson, you learned about the cascading process. The purpose of cascading strategy is to communicate, align and validate HQ, NAF, wing and intra-wing strategies. This process develops a strategic line of sight between commander's strategic priorities and airman's responsibilities and accountabilities. It is important that you understand this process because for the most part, you are leading at the tactical level and communicating the information both to the operational and strategic levels. You already know that there are many roles to play in ensuring things run smoothly, but no matter how smoothly the organization is functioning, there may always be room for improvement. One tool available to assist you in this process is the SWOT analysis. This technique will increase your effectiveness by aiding you in understanding your organization's strengths and weaknesses and identifying opportunities and threats. At its core, continuous improvement is problem-solving. Senior NCOs that understand the importance of strengths, weaknesses and eliminating threats can significantly assist in reducing inefficiencies within the organization, thus contributing to overall mission success. A good leadership strategy takes all of these factors into account. Strategy will not succeed and avoid, and senior NCO leadership often makes the difference. Senior NCOs must assess their organization's gaps and find ways to close them over the short, medium and long term. Better still, they should integrate leadership along with strategic planning to accomplish the mission effectively. Institutional Competency Managing Organizations and Resources Continuous Improvement A senior NCO should generate ideas for solutions, analyze the effect or impact of each solution and appropriate measurement, and selects appropriate solutions. Mission Effectiveness In this lesson, you learned about the Balanced Scorecard. A balanced scorecard approach is to take a holistic view of an organization. Understanding and effective utilization of the BSC will enable you to identify meaningful and measurable objectives to pursue. The BSC was developed as a management system through performance measurement to assist decision makers in understanding and obtaining strategic goals. It does this by building and balancing causal linked objectives into a balanced scorecard, through which an organization provides a framework that tells the story of the organization's strategy. This strategy can then cascade from senior leadership to all members of the organization. A balanced scorecard should result in improved processes, motivated and educated employees, enhanced information systems, monitored progress, greater customer satisfaction, increased financial usage. With an aligned strategy in place, everyone can focus on the same goals, thus increasing mission effectiveness. Strategic alignment and deployment allows you to define your strategy aimed at mission accomplishment. Strategy is about choices and what the organization chooses to prioritize. Alignment is the communication link that enables cascading the strategy from top down and allows for continuous improvement at every level. Mission and vision statements summarize the organization's strategy and can be easily communicated. A mission statement is the purpose for the organization's existence. A vision statement describes an ideal state of being or existence in the future that is inspiring and empowering. It creates a context for the process of planning a future for the organization. Vision creates unity of purpose for all in the organization. A mission statement differs from a vision statement. For example, most people would say that the mission of the fire department is simply to put out fires. That's not really the mission. The mission is to minimize the loss of life and property due to fire. Why is this important? Because it defines a different way about accomplishing the mission. In other words, if you define your mission too narrowly or too specifically, you will never get to where you want to be. It sounds obvious or trivial, but carefully defining your mission can have profound impact on your success or failure. The organization's mission and vision determines the success of the strategic plan. Without the mission or vision statements, the strategic plan has no ultimate goal to strive and lacks measurability. While an organization can have a strategic plan without a mission or vision statement, the plan is sure to be unsuccessful because it will lack direction and ultimately lead to less than desired mission effectiveness. Summarize. Do you know what your organization will be doing in a year? How about three or five years? Developing a strategic plan will help you stay on track for the future. A good plan states a goal, but a great plan also includes action steps on how to reach that goal. Strategic planning is vital in clarifying where your organization is going and how you are going to get there. The effectiveness of your organization is directly dependent on the effectiveness of your leader's decisions today that will determine the success of the organization in the future. In this chapter, you were introduced to strategic planning. It began by outlining a brief history of strategic planning. You learned that strategic planning began in the military and according to wall in wall, early models of formal strategic planning reflected the hierarchical values and linear systems of traditional organizations. Undertaken by elite planning functions at the top of the organization, its structure was highly dependent on the chain of command. Today, newer models focus on adaptability to change, flexibility, and the importance of strategic thinking. Then the focus switched to building a strategic alignment and deployment strategy. SA&D is a product of annual strategic and performance planning that ensures everyone is effectively working towards the same goals. The ultimate objective of SA&D is to create collaborative links across all areas of an organization. After providing an understanding of SA&D, the balanced scorecard was introduced. Balanced scorecard defines what management means by performance and measures whether the organization is achieving desired results. The balanced scorecard translates mission and vision statements into a comprehensive set of objectives and performance measures that can be quantified and appraised. You learned how to use a strategy map to diagram the organization's strategic objectives in a cause and effect relationship of the four perspectives of the BSC. This chapter ended by reviewing the impact on senior NCO and mission effectiveness. Strategic planning is critical to mission success. It defines the where that your organization is heading. Envisioning goals and then defining strategies that you will embrace to achieve your objectives is the true essence of strategic planning. The end result of developing a strategic plan for your organization is a detailed blueprint on how to be successful. Key Terms Alignment Page 5 Balanced Scorecard Page 8 Cascading Process Page 6 End State Page 12 Goals Page 12 Metric Page 12 Mission Statement Page 6 Objectives Page 12 Priorities Page 11 Strategic Alignment and Deployment Page 5 Strategy Page 5 SWOT Page 10 Tasks Page 12 Vision Page 7