The 3 P's

Pause, personalise and pursue

The 3P’s strategic framework is a sustainable approach to improving organisation performance, through managing the organisational ‘shadow’: the unspoken culture.

Our proposition

There is so much waste and general dissatisfaction in strategic planning and cultural change programs initiated by many companies. This is backed by extensive surveys by McKinseys, one of the worlds leading management consultancies. A few examples from their recent findings are summarised below.

Strategic planing

• A survey of nearly 800 executives: just 45 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with the strategic-planning process. Moreover, only 23 percent indicated that major strategic decisions were made within its confines.
• Most corporate strategic plans have little to do with strategy. They are simply three-year or five-year rolling resource budgets and some sort of market share projection.

Execution

• Eric Beinhocker observed “most organisations are far better at executing their current activities than at adapting to long-term changes in their business environment.” He suggests that the barriers to adaptability are deeply rooted in the nature of organisations:

• Inflexibility in the mental models of their managers;
• Organisational complexity, driven by the demands of execution; and
• Mismatches between current resources and future opportunities.

Cultural change

• McKinseys global survey of more than 1,500 organisations indicated that only 6% of organisations were completely happy with their cultural change program and 1 in 3 did not consider the program successful.

The 3P’s

Our framework works on the premise: it’s the team who has to implement the strategic decisions of the organisation. There maybe outsider assistance in formulating the decisions, provide technical assistance, and, on occasions, replace existing people but the fact remains: what we have to work with is what we have.

Culture is the “ballast that keeps the ship steady”. It is the “shadow” of the organisation and this shadow is the unwritten ground rules.

Hence the emphasis on the cultural component of any strategy, regardless of the business case:

If you have a strong bottom line …
…manage culture to realise untapped potential.


If you have aggressive growth …
…manage culture to maximise full benefits of change.


If you have a weak bottom line …
…manage culture to face critical business issues and reverse declining performance.

“The companies that find a way to engage every mind, harness every volt of passion and energy, bring excitement to the lives of the people and break every artificial barrier between people will be the companies that will win.”