Acquisitive Growth – Workshop 2 (Strategic Aspiration)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Acquisitive Growth is provided by Mr. Chicles Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 24 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Mr Chicles is an approved Certified Learning Provider (CLP) at Appleton Greene who is a business leader and strategist with broad experience in the global multi-industrial, aerospace and defense sectors. He is a seasoned operational leader of global industrial businesses, leading transformational strategies in highly competitive markets.
As a senior, C-suite strategist for multiple major industrial corporations he has led multiple mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and restructurings, as well as corporate break-ups and spin-offs. He has a distinguished track record of successful transformations of complex organizations in dynamic and uncertain market conditions while engendering the trust and buy-in of employees, customers, vendors, owners, corporate leadership and boards of directors.
A highly engaged leader at the personal and team level he has demonstrated the ability to engender effective senior teams and boards. He’s also an active mentor, teacher and community leader.
Mr Chicles is an active board member with AES Seals, global leader in sustainable reliability engineering, and Micro Technologies Inc, an electronics and advanced manufacturing company. He is a principal partner with ProOrbis Enterprises®, a management science consultancy with premier clients such as the US Navy and PwC, as well as the principal of Xiphos Associates™, a management and M&A advisory. Recently, he served as Board Director and Chairman of Global Business Development with Hydro Inc. the largest independent pump and flow systems engineering services provider in the world.
He was President of ITT’s Industrial Process / Goulds Pumps business segment a global manufacturer of industrial pumps, valves, monitoring and control systems, and aftermarket services for numerous industries with $1.2 billion in revenue, 3,500 employees and 34 facilities in 17 countries. Preceding this role he served as Executive Vice President of ITT Corporation overseeing the creation of a newly conceived ITT Inc. following the break-up of the former ITT Corporation to establish its strategy and corporate functions such as HR, communications, IT and M&A, building the capabilities, policies and organizations for each.
He joined ITT Corporation’s executive committee as its strategy chief in 2006 and instituted disciplined strategic planning processes and developed robust acquisition pipelines to respond to rapidly changing markets. Created successful spin-offs of 2 new public corporations Exelis Inc. and Xylem Inc. ITT Corporation was named one of “America’s Most Respected Corporations” by Forbes for exemplary management and performance during his tenure there.
Before joining ITT, Mr Chicles served as Vice President of Corporate Business Development and head of mergers and acquisitions for American Standard / Trane Companies, where he initiated and closed numerous transactions and equity restructurings globally.
Additionally, he created and led the corporate real estate function which entailed more than 275 real estate transactions around the world.
He began his career at Owens Corning rising through the ranks in various operational roles to Vice President of Corporate Development.
Recently, he taught advanced enterprise strategy at Stevens Institute of Technology as an adjunct professor and still supports start-ups through the Stevens Venture Center. He continues to be active as the Founding Board Member with several successful start-up technology businesses and non-profit organizations. A community leader, Mr Chicles has held the role of President of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tenafly, N.J., He also led trips abroad to Cambodia and Costa Rica to build sustainable clean-water solutions and affordable housing.
His formal education includes earning a Masters of Business Administration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelors in Finance from Miami University.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
A Winning Aspiration defines the purpose of your enterprise, its guiding mission and aspiration, in strategic terms. The first choice of the strategic choice cascade is winning aspirations. Here we ask, “what is our winning aspiration.” Strategically, our winning aspiration defines our purpose. Aspirations are a view of the future. Qualified with “winning,” it is the ideal future that we strive to achieve. Unless you deliberately set out to win, it is impossible to do so. A business that only wants to participate rather than succeed will invariably fall short of making the difficult decisions and large investments necessary to succeed. Aspirations that are too modest rather than lofty are much more harmful. Most businesses fail because they have low expectations.
Objectives
01. Share your Winning Aspirations: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Review your Strategy: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Identify your Growth & Contingencies: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Know your Marketplace: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Define your Competitive Advantage: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Establish your Strategic Priorities: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Flexible Strategy Development: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Build your Growth Plan: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Ensure Confidence in the Plan: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Build your Financial Plan: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Build your People Plan: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Execute your Strategy: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. Share your Winning Aspirations: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Review your Strategy: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Identify your Growth & Contingencies: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Know your Marketplace: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Define your Competitive Advantage: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Establish your Strategic Priorities: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Flexible Strategy Development: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Build your Growth Plan: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Ensure Confidence in the Plan: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Build your Financial Plan: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. Build your People Plan: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Execute your Strategy: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Share your Winning Aspirations.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Review your Strategy.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Identify your Growth & Contingencies.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Know your Marketplace.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Define your Competitive Advantage.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Establish your Strategic Priorities.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Flexible Strategy Development.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Build your Growth Plan.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Ensure Confidence in the Plan.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Build your Financial Plan.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Build your People Plan.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Execute your Strategy.
Introduction
In the previous workshop, we discussed how your internal business assessment was the first stage in your acquisitive growth journey. During the business assessment stage, you highlight a set of ‘achievables’, or objectives which you will set out to achieve within your internal process before you set out on your acquisitive growth journey. In workshop 2, we will be discussing the strategies that will help you achieve these goals, or the HOW – HOW will you achieve these goals? What strategies must you put in place to make these changes happen?
In workshop 2, we will discuss the importance of strategy and how your strategic aspirations need to be felt and understood by your whole business in order for these aspirations to become reality. During this workshop, we will highlight the importance of communication, planning, flexibility, establishing priorities, and other important factors which will help you create a strategic acquisitive growth plan.
How Strategy Really Works
What is Strategy?
Strategy is really about choosing precise actions to succeed in the marketplace. A company develops a durable competitive edge over its rivals by “deliberately adopting a new set of activities to generate unique value,” according to Michael Porter, author of Competitive Strategy, arguably the most well-known book on strategy ever written. So, strategy entails making clear decisions—to do certain things and not others—and constructing a business around those decisions. Simply said, choice is a strategy. More formally, a strategy is a coordinated sequence of decisions that places a company in its industry in a special position to generate competitive advantage and greater value.
Too often CEO’s allow the urgent to cloud out the important. “When an organizational bias for action drives doing, often thinking falls by the wayside.”
Many leaders have a propensity to approach strategy in one of the inefficient ways listed below rather than developing it:
1. They define strategy as a vision;
2. They define strategy as a plan;
3. They deny that long-term strategy is possible;
4. They define strategy as the optimization of the status quo; and
5. They define strategy as following best practices.
“These ineffective approaches,” Lafley and Martin argue, “are driven by a misconception of what strategy really is and a reluctance to make truly hard choices.”
Everyone like to have as many options as possible, but in order to “win,” you must make and implement decisions. Tough decisions require you to make them, but if you let them, they can also focus your organization. Great organizations choose to win.
A corporation will invariably fall short of making the difficult decisions and substantial investments that would make winning even a remote possibility when it sets out to participate rather than win.
Particularly, the answers to these five interconnected problems are found in strategy:
1. What is your winning aspiration? The purpose of your enterprise, its motivating aspiration.
2. Where will you play? A playing field where you can achieve that aspiration.
3. How will you win? The way you will win on the chosen playing field.
4. What capabilities must be in place? The set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen way.
5. What management systems are required? The systems and measures that enable the capabilities and support the choices.
As one might expect, a small firm might only have one choice cascade, whereas a large corporation might have several “levels of choices and interconnected cascades.” Nested cascades indicate that decision-making occurs at practically every organizational level.
Winning Aspirations
Statements concerning the ideal future are known as aspirations. Later on in the process, a corporation attaches certain precise benchmarks that track progress toward those goals to those aspirations. … Over time, aspirations can be adjusted and changed. Because they exist to consistently align business actions, aspirations shouldn’t vary day to day and should be made to persist for a while.
Creating a Winning Aspiration
Question 1: What is your company’s purpose, or “winning aspiration”?
Choose your con