Week Ten - Strategic Direction

Thoughts on Strategic Direction

Convincing consumers they need something can be a slippery slope. Some consumers who will buy on a whim and others will never be convinced. When you instill an appreciation for a company beyond the product itself consumers are more likely to purchase because they have a deeper appreciation beyond a single product. I think this is a similar phenomenon to employers/employees. It’s why in recent years so much more care, concern, and effort has been put into hiring employees who may not have the perfect skillset but do fit the culture and who embrace the mission and vision of the company. Skills can be taught and learned. Culture, mission, and vision don’t come quite so easily.

“Watkins, Triner, and Kaufman (1996) suggest that strategic plans frequently fail to guide decision making by focusing on processes instead of results. When strategic plans focus on process, describing what employees should do rather than what results should be accomplished, they lose their ability to guide decisions by disempowering employees” (Watkins, 2006, pg. 192). 

WOW! The idea that strategic plans would focus on results and guidance for decision making rather than outlining a process is completely foreign to me! I have never experienced this first hand. I could never have put my finger on what was missing but this is it. I have been given strategic plans loaded with instruction set after instruction set and very rarely felt like I was in a place to make a decision (when I should have been able to) for fear of leadership swinging a different direction on Monday than the previous Friday. The chain of results Mega, Macro and Micro levels explained and expounded on in Watkins’ Chapter Eight are incredibly helpful for breaking down priorities and recognizing when and where goals and tasks become important or unimportant. Another helpful section was the questions around defining success, specifically identifying stakeholders and considering the implications of the stakeholders. ‘Stakeholders’ is another buzz word I have heard leadership toss around but they were never able to connect the dots between stakeholders and what we did on a daily basis. Which often meant what we did on a daily basis seemed like a waste of time. Another phrase I have often heard tossed around is ‘the results are only as good as the data used’. In considering the implications for HPT it seems the biggest hurdles would also stem from having enough ‘good data’ (well laid strategic plans) to empower the consultants to create meaningful and helpful projects for the organization. Maybe I’m tainted by bad experiences but I wonder if it’s really possible to have well laid strategic plans that would empower those in the HPT realm to actually benefit the organizations seeking help.

 

Watkins (2006). Aligning Human Performance Technology Decisions with an Organization’s Strategic Direction. In Pershing, J. A. (Ed.), Handbook of human performance technology (pp. 191-207). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.