Hey there and welcome back to Best Practice TV in this episode what we're talking
about is what's our plan, how we're running our strategy for the next 12 months stay tuned.
So what I thought I'd cover for you today is just give you a quick
example here on the whiteboard of how we're running Best Practice and how
we're developing our strategic plan for the next 12 months. I thought there'd be
some value for you guys to maybe copy what we're doing and if you want to
quote Picasso "good artists copy, great artists steal" so if you want to steal
this from me it's definitely what it's for, so a little bit of how-to. So the
first thing I'm just going to go through is the calendar. So we have a couple of
activities coming up in the next five or six weeks which is really exciting. The
first one is our exec strategy. And that's a two day event and then the
second thing that we're doing is our staff conference. Now we get everybody
together from our staffs perspective, twice a year. And our exact strategy day
which is a two day workshop is once, then we look at each quarter, and we look at
the results of each quarter. So the third thing we're doing is quarterly and then
we set 90-day plans, so we divide the year into four parts we set our 90-day plans.
So what that looks like is our strategy, this is our exec, then we go into our
staff conference and the other thing that's happening obviously as part of
this exercise is q1 then we go q2
and then we go into q3 and then back to our annual. Now we've used a couple of
different systems to run this over the years but what what's happened is that
we've sort of I guess with all of the different things that we've used in the
different inputs and different consultants that have helped us over the
years we've come up with this successful formula so part of the success of
Best Practice is constantly looking at this quarterly cycle and just remaining focus
so we never focus more than 90 days ahead. We do, if there's a project
that's maybe going to run for six months or for 12 months, okay we say
that's fine it can run for twelve months but we break it into quarterly
components which is really important to just stay focused on each sort of
milestone and it gives us that deadline to achieve a particular milestone. So our
CRM for example, CRM has been an ongoing project we've had where we're now coming
to our fourth CRM in the history of the business, keep outgrowing what we build
and so you know and there's some criticisms and challenges why didn't we
think about it well that's just it is what it is unfortunately so the
criticism of ourselves is we didn't think big enough when we went into the
first CRM or the second CRM or the third CRM. So what we're looking at is
and it's in process at the moment the first quarter sorry so for q2 this year
we spect the CRM q3 with building and then q4 we're ready to roll out so in q1
next year we'll be doing the rollout, if that makes sense. So that's a long
project and we've been basically, we've been working on quarterly stages of that
particular project. So that's basically how Best Practice runs from a strategic
planning perspective. Now we've obviously got a couple of significant events, out
of our staff, now our staff are getting together twice, we have our one day
conference and then we have, obviously one thing happens here in summer
time here in Australia is we have our festive season, so our staff process then
comes around to what is our Christmas party.
And and part of our Christmas party is it's just this twice yearly catch-up
because we've got lots of stuff all over the country so that's the
sort of cycle with the bulk of our people but then sitting on top of that
is our executive cycle. Now in some of the teams they have either weekly or
monthly catch ups and updates and their own project so our operations team for
example meet monthly, our marketing team meet weekly so
there's a couple of things there that you know yes there's a lot of meetings
but we try to just systemize it so it's not at hoc and then just keep falling
back into the routine and the habits and that's how you just get small
incremental amounts of improvement. So now that's obviously our strategic cycle
now the fourth thing that you might have heard me talk about is our weekly exec.
So I guess that forms the foundation there's a weekly exec our operations
team I just mentioned meet monthly our marketing team meet weekly and then
I meet with our finance manager a couple of times a week just to catch up on what
the numbers are doing and you know that things aren't out of control but we try
and sit on a systemized behavioural process based approach and stay within
those cycles. So that's really the skeleton if you like or the strategic
planning and strategic management process here at Best Practice. Now that
spins off a couple of things there's a couple of inputs through these process
and, it processes, and a couple of outputs. So some of the inputs over here and if
you're talking about the process model with ISO 9001 or any of the standard and
this is how your Quality Management System ties into your executive and
business planning system is some of the inputs here are obviously our first
thing is our data. So these are all of our numbers and I talked a lot about our
30 stats. Those stats are reported weekly in the exec and then reviewed quarterly
to look at how we're tracking against our targets, our target. Now when you look
at iso 9001 we don't use all of the language with our quality management
system that we talked about targets. Objectives and targets so ISO 9001
talks about management objectives and targets.
We've got thirty statistics, management objectives and targets and their part of our
business plan. So that's how your business plan talks to your quality
management system. Some of the other inputs are obviously issues, or if
you use a quality management system you might call them non-conformance's or
opportunities for improvement. So opportunity for improvement or
NCR so if your a quality manager watching this, we feed those things into our
executive planning process and I think that's very high level that's a summary
of how we're tracking. Any of the data there's finance stuff in here there's
quality stuff in here there's safety there's environment we're looking
obviously checking against our targets and our issues and then what we then
talk about is our outputs. So the first thing in terms of outputs and I'll just
put it as a 4 so that we're following is any resource needs. So that might be
training, it might be process improvement, it might be budget and then we might
talk about new plans for example. So it's really sort of an inputs and outputs, now
we call this in ISO in any of the ISO standards what do we call all of this?
That's our business planning and leadership and this is our management review.
So, sorry it's a bit messy and it's just a quick presentation but I just wanted
to talk about how we run Best Practice, you know taking our own medicine if you
like in terms of the ISO standard so that's sort of a strategic process. Now
there's a couple of things that support both of these but I think are really
important for you guys, the first thing obviously is we run a
risk register and that sort of summarizes the issues and risks and we
do that as part of this executive session so we run a risk workshop so if
you talked about this agenda over here we've got a risk a risk register, we have
a standard. So there is really critical objectives and outcomes for each of
these meanings that are documented. We have a risk register, standard agenda, we
have rules or guidelines so we have meeting and I've talked a bit on our
YouTube channel about meetings and our guidelines but this particular thing
here with regards to meeting guidelines. I'm absolutely critical and being
razor-sharp on starting a meeting on time so for our Monday executive meeting
for this one, it's at four o'clock every Monday, we've just recently moved the
time. We're sitting in this room right here at 3:50 on a Monday afternoon ready
to start bang on four o'clock and the meeting has to be finished at 5:30 sharp
and it's absolutely mandatory. There's no waffling on there's no carry on it's
short it's sharp it's concise it's well practiced it's taken us a long time to
get to that point but the sooner you can get to just focusing on, start sharp,
finish sharp, then everybody's going to be right I know that means going to
start on time I know that means going to finish on time but be more excited and
more motivated to go to those meetings which is really exciting. So our standard
agenda, our meeting guidelines, number four is obviously our reporting. So these
are the things that sort of support what's happening our reporting
frameworks so the statistic there's all the graph, blank graphs templates that we
use to actually manage that. So what that's basically saying is, you know is
our graphs. So you know if you were developing things to run your company
and if you're whether you're starting and you're an entrepreneur or
whether you've got a system. A management system that we certified
so your client watching this, you know it's really important to be saying
okay well I need a risk register, I need a standard agenda for each of the
meetings I'm going to have. Meeting guidelines and the meeting guidelines
about starting and stopping and finishing on time and what you're going
to cover move really quickly through the agenda. The agendas are, you know, the
meeting guidelines that's all standard stuff so you just roll it out to people
practice, practice, practice, practice and perfect practice makes perfect.
And then our reporting graphs. So I think what I wanted to show you here today was
just how we sort of frame up Best Practice. And the last thing is our
training plan so you know all this spills out into other stuff personal
development plans for people ties into training we don't really have here at
Best Practice a big fat manual you know the quality manuals are becoming a thing
of the past. We run Dropbox and there's the process
maps and those sorts of things that people need to understand what their
processes are in Dropbox. But we find that it's more about here Best Practice
about behavior, rather than relying on lots and lots of documents and polished
up procedures. So what I'm basically saying, if you want to run your
management system don't go and write lots of documents just start these
processes and keep these artifacts of your history. So the risk register being
updated the standard agenda the meeting guidelines the reporting graphs and then
the training plan and obviously any of these meetings you'll document minutes.
So that's, these are the artifacts that are going to start capturing so evidence
artifacts whatever you might do. So that's the strategic planning at Best
Practice our executive annual meeting is coming up in the middle of June to plan
the next financial year where we'll finish our budgets and settle our
targets. Our staff conferences that is at the end of June and then we just roll
into the rest of the year we'll catch up with all of the staff again Christmas,
they'll have their little you know the staff had their little sort of
punctuated meetings through the process of the year and that feeds out into the
executive so that would be the feedback, you know these meetings are feeding out
into the executive and that's how our leadership commitment is running
and we, you know this is so escalation of issues into the executive. So quite a
cool process, it's really lean and it's why we're succeeding, so I hope you can
copy it, steal this now if you're watching this video rewind it a little
bit screenshot and it's excellent. Do you want more of this great content? Jump
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