Building Enterprise Capabilities
THE MISSING LINK BETWEEN STRATEGY AND PERFORMANCE
Read any book or article on strategy, participate in a seminar or workshop or discuss strategy with planners or academics, and a central notion that is lacking is a broader discussion of "capabilities." Capabilities are almost always described in terms of the need for them and their alignment with strategy, but few have attempted to fully articulate what they are, how to identify them, how to assess them or how to build them. Fortunately, that gap has now been filled.
Typically, when asked "what are the top business challenges executives must pay attention to" the responses are similar: the competitive landscape is changing, and new models of competitiveness are needed to deal with the challenges ahead. These responses reveal a new competitive reality demanding an approach that will enable firms to better serve their customers and to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
The drive to competitive advantage and profitable growth has fueled a need to systematically assess and renew the enterprise. Nowhere is this more true than where innovative responses to market changes or competitive demands are required, the rate of technological change is rapid, time-to-market is critical, or the nature of competition and markets are difficult to determine.
In this seminar, managers will craft a framework for superior performance by building strategic organization capabilities. We will explore the issues of. what are strategic capabilities, how do we know one when we see one, how do we assess for criticality, how can they help create competitive advantage AND profitable growth for the firm, and what systems and processes do we shape in order to build them?
Competitive advantage is, more often than not, only temporary! Further, we can sustain temporary advantage by constantly renewing capabilities and chains of capabilities. Renewal is your capacity to adapt and reconfigure your strategic capabilities - those organizational skills, resources, and functional competencies that give you competitive advantage - to match the requirements of a changing environment. This involves the redirection of skills and knowledge bases so today's expertise can be shaped into tomorrow's capabilities.
Where is your organization? Some organizations are clearly ahead in this arena, many are struggling. As a business manager, at some point you must ask yourself: What is the future you want to create for the enterprise? How do you sustain competitive advantage? What are you really good at? How do you use what you're good at to compete? How will you generate new, value-creating strategies? How capable are you at innovating.in comparison to your competition? How do you renew the enterprise to achieve profitable growth? What specific capabilities are you trying to create and are they of strategic value in competitive terms? How do capabilities add value to your customer?
What are your "Strategic Organization Capabilities?" Capabilities are "the things you do best." They are the collective abilities of the organization to accomplish strategic objectives; the know-how that enables your organization to perform; the unique skills and processes needed to fill the gap between strategic intention and competitive outcome. They represent your company's ability to successfully apply knowledge to the use of resources in pursuit of your goals.
Are you a "Capable Enterprise?" A "capable enterprise" is one that is able to consistently achieve superior performance, deliver superior value to its customers, innovate more rapidly, is difficult to imitate, and is more profitable. A capable enterprise is one that has developed and sustained a few vital capabilities - one that believes that its competitive success depends on being the best at what it does. Capabilities are usually characterized as touching all parts of the enterprise - as with 3M's coating and bonding capabilities or Wal-Mart's logistical capabilities.
How do you compete on capabilities? Competing as a "capable" organization clearly requires a different way of thinking, a different way of behaving, and a different way of doing business. In today's fast-paced world, competition is becoming a "war of maneuverability," and our strategy for competing must be more dynamic. The essence of competition, then, is not the structure of the industry but the dynamics of behavior. The goal being to develop the hard-to-imitate strategic capabilities that distinguish a company from its competitors in the eyes of the customer. A move to continually renew the enterprise is, therefore, no longer optional for a company but a necessity.
How does your company approach strategy? Joseph Schumpeter described the "...perennial gale of creative destruction" as the essential feature for "every piece of business strategy." That advice is as sound today as it was 60 years ago. In a stable environment, strategy is about staking out a position and getting better at the things necessary to defend that position. In today's turbulent world, though, advantage is usually temporary and strategy becomes more about "agility" than industry structure. An agile organization has to have the ability to switch gears quickly-from rapid product development to process development; from low cost to differentiation and vice versa, and to do it quickly and with minimal resources. This demands a great deal of agility and innovativeness on the part of the enterprise.
What You Will Learn About Building Strategic Capabilities - In this workshop you will develop a new perspective on strategic
capabilities through an analysis of what capabilities are, where they're found, how processes combine to create capabilities and how capabilities are combined and
recombined to create competitive advantage. We will approach capability building in the context of business strategy, renewal, innovation and change, using 5 capability
building blocks:
- STRATEGY
- STRUCTURE
- SYSTEMS
- PEOPLE
- CULTURE
Benefits to Your Company - In this program we will show you how you can help identify and build on the capabilities that represent the strengths of your company. You will develop an understanding of strategy that starts with business drivers and strategic intent and defines the capabilities required to either develop or achieve your strategic goals. In short, we will help you cut through the mystery of "capabilities" and expose the practical, systemic approaches that have been proven to work.
Who Should Attend - This program is for mid- to senior-level managers and professionals, as well as those who deal with the introduction of change and business improvement processes and their alignment with business performance.
Program Outline
Building Enterprise Capabilities
THE MISSING LINK BETWEEN STRATEGY AND PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM GOALS
- Learn a comprehensive model for planning, assessing and building capabilities
- Gain a deeper understanding of the role of Human Resources in building capability
- Learn the basics of a comprehensive model for planning, assessing and building strategic capabilities
- Learn to assess, identify, and leverage key capabilities that foster innovation and competitive behavior
- Gain a deeper understanding of the role of capabilities in the context of superior performance
- Identify opportunities for building capabilities-based innovations that lead to profitable growth
WHAT WE WILL COVER IN THIS PROGRAM
A Framework for Business Excellence
- The Context for Superior Competitive Performance
- Building Blocks of Business Excellence
Thinking Strategically
- A Framework for Thinking Strategically
- Strategic Agility - Changing Our Thinking
- Strategy and Renewal
- The Capability Architecture
Planning and Initiating
- Fundamental Inputs to Capability Analysis
- The Planning Cycle
- Team Composition and Charter
Assessing Organization Capabilities
- Building the Organizational Profile
- Assessing Market/Customer Opportunities
- Analyzing the Value Chain
- Conducting an Organization Capabilities Analysis
Innovating/Building Capabilities
- Innovation as a Strategic Capability
- Reconfiguring Capabilities/Chains
- Organizational Shaping Protocols
Execution: Learning, Leading, Aligning
- Issues for the Learning Organization
- Leadership in the Capable Enterprise
- Governance and Design Issues
Measuring and Monitoring Progress
- Measuring Organizational Effectiveness
- Building a Balanced Scorecard
- Link and Learn
|
