Facts in the Future^Ž

Facts in the Future^Ž is our business strategy formulation and implementation program, a registered trademark for Thomas & Company's process to help you develop a great business plan and the discipline to "do it." It is especially attractive for companies and business units with up to $100 million in sales.

Many structures outlive their usefulness. Over time once successful organizations mutate and solidify into bureaucracies and vested interests. As a result, they suffer from fragmentation— the parts no longer fitting into a coherent whole.

The result is an unaligned, buckshot approach to business strategy from capable, well-intentioned people. The costs are high. There are frustrations, wasted effort, and enormous energy expended in an attempt to implement the business' fundamental strategy. In a phrase, the organization is not putting its intellectual capital to best use.

Successful leaders must have the vision to see possibilities clearly, and they must have the courage to alter structures that no longer work.

There are decisive steps to take today that improve your ability to succeed. One of those steps is the Thomas & Company Inc. Facts in the Future^Ž program. Facts in the Future^Ž is a process that rapidly transforms conflicting business structures into a comprehensive, aligned strategy for the whole organization.

Objective

We provide your team with the perspective and essential tools to build a concrete plan to achieve your business goals.

The step-by-step process:

Facts in the Future^Ž will energize your leadership initiatives by:

Setting crisp goals and establishing clear priorities
Helping the team accurately assess current reality
Applying techniques in a crisp process allowing the team to plan and execute the activities required to achieve goals
Developing a complete action plan everyone will use to measure the team's progress and results.

What employees want today

From you, your employees want clarity and the freedom to act with fewer restraints to achieve their objectives. From us they learn a process that allows them to become fully involved in creating and executing a plan they believe in because they created it. This process of achieving commitment and applying competence is very deliberate and very public. Managers commit to each other for accountability of timely completion of activities essential for the business to achieve its objectives.

Employees also want to develop themselves by learning new skills. Facts in the Future^Ž gives them powerful tools to use in creating, monitoring, and revising their plans. In fact, they learn a model that can be useful in their personal lives as well.

We ascertain current reality

We identify and understand the structures that inhibit you from achieving your goals. We juxtapose crystal-clear current reality to your goals to create a tension which demands resolution.

Then we review critical issues and success factors with the personnel involved in the strategy session. We develop solutions and create a detailed plan for the year covering ground that includes:

What are the elements of a strategic plan
What kind of thinking will produce the best plan
How they can implement their business plan to achieve results
Why making a public commitment improves results.

The result is a plan to produce the results you want.

Who should participate?

Managers responsible for team, departmental, or organizational strategy should participate. We have also worked successfully in national seminars on sales leadership where each manager created his/her own unique sales plan in a workshop environment.

Clarity of Strategy is essential

You've probably heard the story of a team in the jungle working in harmony cutting a swath through the dense foliage and making remarkable headway against tough terrain. Everyone was excited about their progress until the leader climbed a tree to improve his perspective. Startled, he yells an unwelcome truth, "Wrong forest!"

That's the importance of defining your business strategy, recognizing current reality, and planning to bridge the gap.

Thomas & Company teaches your organization the difference between strategy and operational effectiveness so that your team chooses the right forest in the first place.

Alignment leverages your plan

Often senior managers are unaware of their own actions that inadvertently frustrate employees and water-down their commitment. Employees are resourceful and usually find ways around obstacles created by the corporate structure. Facts in the Future^Ž assures task clarity and alignment through its focus on day-to-day activities that support a team strategy that in turn supports the department's strategy which supports the organization's strategy and purpose.

The team delivers to you completed business plans with clarity of detail, a blue print for action, so that you can measure each step forward and identify required corrections as the plan unfolds.

If you have clearly prioritized and communicated your objectives, you will move forward as a team focused to attain the results you want to create. From there on, you have the tools to lead the process.

The ultimate question

We have asked the question whether managers would prefer a good strategy with poor implementation or a poor strategy implemented well. A good manager settles for neither choice.

Facts in the Future^Ž is a clear, crisp path to a good strategy well implemented.

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Facts in the FutureŽ