What Is My Approach?

I am a strategic facilitator.  My approach is to facilitate a proven process with you and your leadership team, trusting the process to help you self-discover the facts and truths of your organization and creating a customized plan that fits within your financial and staff capacities.  I say regularly, "I am process. You are content."  I come into an organization with no agenda but with a strategic-operational planning process that works throughout all business and industry sectors.  I facilitate the Paterson Process™, designed by Tom Paterson and tested over forty years in industries around the world.  The Paterson Process™ is a six-phase process that moves an organization towards seamlessness, effectiveness, and adaptability.

 

Phase 1:  Perspective. Asking the question, "Where are we now?, we use a variety of perspective tools necessary to help us gain the perspective of all the critical strategic and operational issues.  I only use the tools that are right for you, and I customize them to your needs. This is not a cookie-cutter process.  These tools include:

• Turning Point Profile
• 4 Helpful Lists
• Pattern and Trend Analysis: Internal and External
• Opportunity Mapping: Life Cycle Assessment; Opportunity Sensing; Risk Analysis; Growth Projection
• What is our Business? (Or Ministry is a local Church)
• Performance Drivers
• Risks and Obstacles

 

Phase 2:  Core Plan.  Asking the question, "Where are we going?", we now build our core plan from the perspective gained in Phase 1.  These core plan components include:

• Core Assumptions: Strategic, Operational, and Financial
• The Strategic Control Panel
• Life-Generating Cycle
• Purpose
• Vision: Where We Stand; Where We're Going; and The Way To Get There
• Values
• Big Idea Core Strategy
• The W.I.N.'s (What's Important Now)
• The Wheel of Action

 

Phase 3:  Implementation.  Asking the question, "How will we get there?", we use the following tools to launch and install the plan.

• Asking the question, "How will we get there?", we use the following tools to launch and install the plan.
  • Action Initiative Profiles (Including objectives, components, benefits, deliverables, and accountability)
  • Identify Champions, Team Leaders, and Team Members
  • Action Plan Creation
• Situational Analyses
• Action Plan Drafts
  • Action Plan "Scrubs" (looking for comprehensiveness, sequential thinking, realistic timelines, and budgeted action steps)
  • Dovetailed Timelines
  • Plan Launch and Install

 

Phase 4: Structure.  Asking the question, "What is the right structure?", we use the following tools to design a structure that you can't outrun for the next five years--based on the principle that "form follows function.

• Structure Design Boundaries
• Organizational Design
• Culture Assessment
• Systems and Processes
• People Development Plan
• Cross-functional and Functional Design

 

Phase 5: Management.  Asking the question, "How are we doing?", you learn how to manage the following components of your plan.

• Managing the Wheel of Action (keeping your Action Initiative Plans in compliance with objectives, timelines and budget)
• Managing The Reds (in the red-yellow-green measuring system)
• Managing the Performance Drivers
• Control Path Analysis (in order to trim out the fat)
• Managing Life Cycles
• Managing the Staff's Contribution to the Plan

 

Phase 6: Renewal.  Asking the question, "What needs to change?", you learn to adapt to rapid change in today's world by using the following tools.

• Renewing the Wheel of Action
• Sensing and Seizing Opportunity (your fountain of youth)
• Renewing Decelerating Life Cycles
• Responding to New Patterns and Trends (internal and external)
• Renewing the Annual Plan

 

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