"It takes personal involvement to understand and remove the barriers that stand between current capabilities and improvement.". W. Edwards Deming How does this statement relate to strategic planning?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

With this statement, Dr. Deming points out to leaders that their organization must be guided toward its ultimate goals. Strategic plans allow leadership to put down in writing the direction the organization is heading and how it plans to get there. To be effective, a strategic plan must be deployed. As living documents, they are not meant to sit on a shelf, only to be touched when it is time for an annual revision. Essentially, creating alignment is policy deployment. Alignment means that if you push on one end, the other end will move in the direction you want. Effective leaders enable members of the organization to make the transition between the strategic plan and daily business activities by translating WHAT needs to be accomplished into HOW it will be accomplished. Effective leaders make sure that the day-to-day activities and the goals of the strategic plans of the organization are in harmony and focused on what is critical to the success of the organization. They want to ensure that if they push on the strategic plan, the actions of their employees will go in the desired direction. For this reason, the strategy must be clearly communicated throughout the organization. Effective leaders make sure that the strategic plan contains clear objectives, provides and utilizes measures of performance, assigns responsibilities to specific individuals, and denotes timing. In order for a strategic plan to be effectively deployed, the organization's reward and recognition system must be support plan deployment.