???? It's getting to be that time of year when people start thinking about planning for the coming year.? The concept of a strategic plan gets dusted off.? Maybe the question of "What happened this year?" surfaces.? Yes, beyond the holiday season, there's this emerging theme of needing to review results and plan for the coming year.? We would like to share with you some? concepts that work for us with companies all over the world.

1.? "Growth" versus "Getting Better" and the concept of Number 1.??

Regardless of what type of industry you're in, whether its profit or non-profit, public or private; strategy is defined for us simply by the emphasis upon growth.? Growth is the reason for strategy, whether the growth is of profit, efficiency, alignment and fulfillment of a charter, sales or market share.? Many organizations confuse growth with getting better, when it comes to their strategic planning.? Here's the difference you want to recognize, and be sure to use the number 1 to help you.?

Every organization can get better... at lots of things.? But, getting better (improvement) is not to be confused with being strategic.? When talking about strategy, getting better is irrelevant unless it can be proved to drive growth.? When you're thinking of strategy, we want you to lay aside all the things you could get better at and start with this one powerful question:

What's the # 1, most important, thing your organization needs to do to drive growth?

We find that answering that question is a journey. If pursued correctly,

• It takes you through a process of listening to and evaluating a variety of emotionally held opinions (yours and others), and determining whether they are fact based.? You'll need to sort out if it's service, or product, or technology, or process or ... is the top driver for growth.

• It takes you through an extensive evaluation of "Is what we are proposing to be #1, what the market is responding to?? What it will respond to?? In consideration of what competitors are doing?

• It takes you through an analysis of what the obstacles are (resources, processes, timing, etc.), both internal and external, that stand in your way of achieving that? #1 activity.

• Finally it takes you into an evaluation of how to measure progress towards? achievement of that? #1 activity, and what initiatives need to take place to bring it to fruition.

2. Once #1 is established, you're safe to extend.

Ok, so let's assume you have identified, researched, struggled with, and built cohesion around what's number 1 in terms of driving growth.? I'm being redundant, but you've gathered enough facts to determine what's the number one thing your organization needs to do strategically.? Having laid that foundation, we then find that organizations make more accurate choices about the other 2-6 additional initiatives that are key to fulfilling their strategic plan.? Most growth strategies aren't well served by just one initiative.? You'll likely have more than one? as well, but for focusing purposes, we do suggest you keep your strategic initiatives to six or less.?

Keep in mind this helpful statement from Michael Robert, author of Strategy Pure & Simple II, "It is our opinion that the ability of people to execute a CEO's strategy is inversely proportionate to the length of the (strategic) statement."

3. Use the PST technology to help drive the strategy.

Ok, so you've got a strategy defined as a series of brief initiatives.? Here's our checklist for using ManagePro and MProWeb to help execute them:

• Define the rationale, requirements and expected obstacles for each initiative.

• Define how progress will be measured, set a target value and configure the objective to take advantage of the scorecard features.

• Assign your strategic objectives as entries in one of the checklist fields (ex. Common user list 1 or 2) and then work through your operational goals and projects, using the same checklist to assign them to the strategic objective they most? support.? This will allow you to filter by strategic objective and view all goals and? projects in support of it.

• Review your strategic objectives monthly.? Require progress updates that contain both text summaries and the latest results scores or metrics.

Top^

1.? Training Workshop is coming up rapidly - now's the time to sign up so you don't miss out.?

The upcoming training workshop is scheduled for Wednesday through Friday, Feb. 2-4, 2005.? Prices are $125 for the beginning to intermediate course, and $175 for the advanced course.? It's on the water, its in the 80's today, odds are it will be in the 70's in February.? You get the picture.
Find out more about it at http://www.managepro.com/training.htm and call us to register today at .

2.? Roles and Goals

We have found that defining goals and action plans is a big challenge for many, one that prevents them from making much progress using our software.? We've modified our approach to have people? start by listing their roles and goals in the GAPR views.? Many have mostly roles (ex. administration, client management, staff supervision, etc.) and very few goals.? That's OK, you can start there.? Just indent and add your tasks? underneath each role and you will immediately begin generating value from using our technology.? You can add goals and action plans as you get more proficient in the program.
?

3.? New? habits, are? the most common key to success using ManagePro and MProWeb.

One thing that we have learned this year is how important it is for people to change their work habits.? Habits represent enduring patterns of behavior, which we view as more reliable indicators of teamwork and ability to use software over time vs. what people learn in a single training event or the rush to pull everything together in the crisis.? People return to their habits.? Build effective habits in team behavior that fit the context, and you have an effective team.? But, why do people have to change habits to use PST's (high performance) technology?? Because without changing our work habits (and introducing less chaos), we can't adopt the technology to help us very easily.? In fact, most of us have the following old habits to change:

• We focus on what needs to be done, and put off or don't get around to updating, posting a progress summary, defining next steps, etc.

• Focus on the next crisis or request, not on goals and objectives,

• Tend to set goals, but don't circle back to measure our progress, much less organize our day around them.

Look at these numbers!?

• 80% of our customers are not able to successfully engage their team members in using either the ManagePro or MProWeb collaboration tools, and are limited to using the tool for their own benefit.

• 19% of our customers use the tools across their top? teams, but struggle with getting more than average value from the program.? They invest in training but usually have budgeted nothing for habit change.

• 1% of our customers accomplish by far the most with the program.? They partner with PST to provide the coaching and repeated practicing with their staff to ensure they don't just obtain technology, they get the habit and behavior change needed to use it.
  ?

4.? Our prices have gone up!

Yes, we have increased our prices across most products from 10- 40%.? Why?? Although we have put a steady stream of new and enhanced features into our software we have essentially frozen (Solo's prices were actually dropped 25%) or dropped our prices over the past three years.? We couldn't continue without correctly re-pricing our products to fit within the market.? So effective 12/15/04 our prices have? increased, and the products will continue to increase in value and features as well.
?

5.? Numbers are very important for process as well.

We have had a lot of fun with numbers and here's a couple of our favorites.

1 - Nothing creates focus like the number 1.? Whether you frame it as the #1 thing to do, or the top priority, the concept of 1 clears the picture, and at times surfaces lots of conflict along the way.

3 - 3 seems to be the number that most comfortably captures the number of tasks or concepts we can conveniently hold and/or work with in our brain.? It's as if our brain will go out to 3, (tell me the next 3 steps, the top 3 customers to focus on today, etc...) and then it takes a pause.

4 - 4 is the number we use to define a process, maps of the world, our business environment, Balanced Scorecard metrics.

6 - 6 is the maximum number of options, alternatives, next steps we can hold in our head before we have to start writing things down.

?
6.? There will be a mini-update for ManagePro users just? before Christmas.

There are a half dozen issues? that are effecting the synchronization process that we want to improve.? So be looking for a notice to upgrade next week.