How is Strategic Thinking Tied to Project Success?
Effective strategic thinking shifts leaders’ focus from managing tasks to managing how the outcome of the project affects the larger enterprise strategy. We posit that looking at everything in a larger context (systems thinking), and viewing how things work together to optimize the total result rather than optimizing individual components can lead to successful project results. Strategic thinking forms a logical foundation on which to define solution outcomes in an enterprise context.
Strategy Bridge facilitators and instructors are adept at working with clients to help them take a step back from the pressing issues of today to focus on planning needs for the future. We offer training that demonstrates the benefit of strategic thinking, and we also provide consulting services to help you develop a systems framework for your project or organization that addresses planning for the future. Implementing tactical imperatives and decision-making based on strategic thinking can help a project succeed.
Design Thinking is an innovative, customer-focused, action-oriented problem solving process used to help organizations with their most complex challenges. By using customer insights and perspectives, design thinking enables organizations to create ideas that meet customer needs. Our Strategy Bridge consultants will work with you to apply the design thinking methodology to develop solutions that will move your organization on the path to a successful future.
Systems thinking is a framework for understanding structure, interrelationships, and behavior on multiple levels. For organizations, we use a systems framework developed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that allows decision-makers to simultaneously consider how the interrelationships of leadership, strategic planning, workforce engagement, customer engagement, operations, and knowledge management, contribute to enterprise results.
Henry Ford (Ford Motor Company’s assembly line) and Kiichiro Toyoda (the Toyota Production System) deserve much of the credit for modern Lean Thinking. Lean principles help organizations to understand value from the customer perspective and to challenge waste and system inefficiencies in providing that value. When combined with our process improvement expertise, Lean Thinking can help you to identify, evaluate, and improve your current processes to impact your bottom line.
Project management (PM) is the art and science of planning and guiding project activities from the beginning of the project. A project manager can drive project success – often in the face of significant challenges – by establishing a project environment that positions the project team for a successful outcome. Rather than setting a course and hoping for the best, skilled project managers cause success to happen!
Strategy Bridge helps project teams formulate appropriate strategies and rapidly develop, integrate, and manage the systems and processes necessary to meet pressing project or organizational objectives. We can assist clients during any project phase, or throughout the entire project life cycle, in applying systems thinking, systems engineering, and effective project management techniques to ensure our clients achieve their desired project results.
“A system is a set of things…inter-connected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.”(Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems, 2008)
The interaction of system elements is what is most interesting to a systems engineer. All systems exhibit synergistic effects, which we call emergent properties. We engineer systems, often based on proven design patterns, to exhibit desired emergent properties to achieve planned functionality. However, sometimes unexpected emergent properties surprise us, especially in complex systems. Some unintended emergent properties are useful and some are not.
Our professional Systems Engineering training and consulting services help build the critical skills of an organization’s most critical and valuable resource - its people. We provide the foundational and the expert skills needed to successfully manage complex systems.
Agile methods are a family of processes, not a single approach. The methodology embraces situations where all requirements cannot be easily defined before implementation tasks. Cross-functional, self-organizing teams work closely with users to understand evolving needs, and typically deliver increments of value (as defined by the users) every two to six weeks until the system meets user needs.
Agile methods are not appropriate for every situation. Our experts can help you decide when agile development can add value, and how to harness agile methods for maximum benefit.
The ability to make defensible, traceable decisions quickly and efficiently is a core management skill. An effective decision process requires thorough planning, sound use of appropriate analytic and intuitive techniques, and skilled facilitation of group collaboration. Knowing how to think about decisions and to structure them in a way that important decisions can be made appropriately advances the progress of an
Our facilitated workshops that address effective decision-making include:
- Collaborative Decision-Making
- Effective Decision-Making
- Engineering Trade Study
- Team Interventions and Mediation
Continual and Breakthrough Improvement for Enterprise Success
Successful enterprises establish and utilize business processes—actions or operations where value is created, enterprise resources are consumed, and connection with customers, suppliers and business partners is achieved. Efficient and effective processes contribute to responsive, productive and cost- effective enterprises. Successful organizations proactively seek to improve processes to align with strategic initiatives, optimize operational efficiencies, shorten cycle times, and add value to customer relationships.
Strategy Bridge will provide you with a practical and effective set of skills, techniques and methods for identifying, mapping, measuring, objectively analyzing and improving business processes and practices within your enterprise and across enterprise boundaries. It focuses on the critical applications of process mapping, analysis, and improvement techniques to reinforce techniques and enhance your skills.
Our leadership programs equip client participants with the self-awareness and people skills necessary to accomplish challenging tasks and achieve breakthrough results. Participants gain skills in: building trust, empowering others, providing feedback, and managing the conflicts. Participants also gain an understanding of the key attributes of high performance teams and how they are reinforced and challenged by their organization’s strategy, business context, and work environment. In developing a leadership program, the traits of leadership are explored at individual, project and organizational levels.
Our clients rely on Strategy Bridge to design and facilitate leadership programs to augment their career development programs. We have facilitated seminars and workshops at a specific client location as well as at their multiple national locations, bringing consistency of message across their organization. Our executive coaching program utilizes certified coaches, assessment tools, and tailored one-on-one coaching sessions to develop individual and team action plans to accelerate organization success.
Strategy Bridge helps organizations achieve success in managing organizational change and our approach includes:
- Taking a systems view.
- Assembling a guiding coalition.
- Communicating the Vision.
- Ensuring leadership skills are in place.
- Preparing for common challenges.