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Quantum Intelligent StrategyTM
Organizational Intelligence + Strategic Planning Design
Tired of spending money on strategic planning workshops that feel like a waste of time?
Just to get a new plan that's nothing but a regurgitation of every other plan that failed to deliver your vision?​
It's time to break all the rules.
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Taking strategy to the next levels means a fundamental shift in how we think about strategy design, and planning that recognizes the complex adaptive nature of organizations.
This requires an integrated approach to strategy, risk and resilience that balances the internal needs of the organization with the external needs of its clients, partners, industry, and stakeholders.
This is Quantum Intelligent Strategy, and we get it done using the Essential Strategy Formula.
Intelligence + Design + Performance Formula
Organizational Intelligence: the First Lift of Strategic Planning
Operational Performance Intelligence
This is phase one, gathering and reviewing information on what has worked and what has not worked. This includes deep dive work with your senior team and key SMEs and/or stakeholders to identify subtle threads that independently raise no flags, but when taken together, finally explain positive and negative drivers of performance that you didn't even know were there.
This work starts with 1:1 interviews with the planning team and other critical players. The compiled data lays the foundation for a pre-workshop prep session with the senior team to build the inputs needed to inform the main planning event.
You don't need to be told what you already know, so this work builds off whatever is currently in place and augments it with fresh perspective with no unnecessary reinvention.
People & Systems Intelligence
Phase two involves understanding the dynamics of your leadership team and holistic culture of the organization you run, critical elements in the strategy design game. Even if you have been in the CEO chair for a while, subtle shifts in the ecosystem can easily go unnoticed, often caused by the movement of people in and out of your organization, regardless of what level they served.
Cutting edge science is the answer to truly understanding how your team works and how they can work better together. Read the stats. PrinciplesUs is in the business of people - they have developed and continue to refine the latest science that helps teams understand each other, and keep a pulse on the culture they steward.
For these reasons, the PrinciplesUs and 5Cs Culture Assessment are included in every project.
Dive Even Deeper with the ESQI Performance 360 - Optional Add-on
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For new CEOs trying who want an unbias top-to-bottom assessment of their organization, or existing CEOs who feel the edges fraying around their operation and just can't pin it down, I offer the ESQI Performance 360 as Discovery add-on to a core strategic planning project. My roots run as deep in enterprise risk as they do strategy - this 360 deep dive was built with the passion and experience of someone who's spent an entire career learning to see through the noise to identify what others just can't see.
The analysis unlocks a holistic understanding of how the organization itself operates, learns, adapts, and navigates both internal and external influences. Using more than 70 data points to understand performance drivers across four quadrants within the Operational Core, Business Discipline agility, and key attributes that define a Quantum Intelligence organization, we are looking for gaps between formalized expectation and operational reality.
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Inputs include an initial survey evaluation, 1:1 conversations with function leaders and SMEs, and a in-depth review of key program documentation. The output is a comprehensive report that includes an executive summary, priority recommendations by quadrant, as well as overarching performance drivers that impact strategy design and execution.
The most common mistake I see leaders make is assuming they know what's going on because they've seen it before somewhere else.
It just doesn't work that way.
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Erin’s ability to get at the root of a problem and then support a team in crafting the solution is exceptional. We worked with her to gap assess an issue we had affecting client capture in one of our groups. From the start, we thought we knew what the problem was and that Erin would simply confirm our suspicions. We were enlightened when her analysis revealed that what we thought was an issue wasn’t one at all – we actually had a completely different problem. She then worked with our team to create an action plan to get the group back to an optimum level of performance. The results have been extremely successful – we couldn’t be happier!
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Lydia Griffey, Senior Principal at Stantec
Getting to the root of a problem is never as easy as we want it to be. The interconnectedness of every system, process, person, understanding, influence, and environmental driver creates a mesh of relationships and networks. These are things we have to take together in a holistic way when assessing strategic performance. Recognizing the complex nature of organizations - and that no two are alike - we must overcome the tendency to make assumptions about where we think the core problems are. Operational Performance Intelligence are the parts you're used to - metrics, trends, swots. What is equally critical but rarely part of the equation is People & Systems Intelligence - this is the pulse of your organization, and will tell you how agile, adaptive, and connected it is.
Strategy Design: the Main Event
Many things come into play to support an organization as an ongoing concern, but at the most fundamental level, clarity around its Purpose, Growth, and Evolution must exist if it is to succeed. This is true regardless of entity type, structure, size, complexity or industry. Strategy comes undone when the strategic plan fails to speak directly to all three of these elements.
This is the critical flaw in traditional strategic planning - this lack of context that connects strategy to the most critical elements of organizational success. When internal thriving is a strategic priority, it accelerates and expands an entity’s ability to achieve traditional targets for external growth and impact.
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We get there by defining organizational imperatives around Purpose, Growth, and Evolution as those three things apply both to the organization itself as well as those it serves extenally. Once we understand these overarching imperatives, then and only then do we define strategic goals, objectives, and targets that manage them in active Equilibrium. This is the PGEE foundation, and it sits at the heart of the Essential Strategy Formula.
Organizations are not machines. Like any living thing, they must have purpose, they must grow, and they must evolve.
Essential Strategy is the formula that builds into this reality.
The Essential Strategy Formula is the framework for designing strategy with Quantum Intelligence. Built on a Purpose, Growth, and Evolution core foundation, and managed in dynamic Equilibrium, Essential Strategy supports a vital shift from linear cause-and-effect thinking to a more holistic and adaptive mindset, finally bridging conscious leadership with equally conscious strategy.
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Quantum Intelligence, as I coin the term, is the awareness of the quantum reality we live in - where everything is energy, everything is connected, and everything moves in response to everything else - together with the capacity to apply that understanding within the realm of business.
I love the way Erin talks about strategy. Pulling evolution into the conversation helped guide our thinking towards what we wanted to become - and how we needed to consider the structure, focus, and current state of our organization so that we could get there.
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Dr. Charlene Stern, Vice Chancellor
An Efficient Process
Essential Strategy projects move through a four-step process organized around Discovery, Alignment, Pathfinding, and Performance to put strategic planning elements in the right order and create space to bridge what we know we can do with where we want to go. What happens in each phase will be unique to each organization with activity, analysis, and outputs designed specifically for the problems we are trying to solve.
Discovery: A pre-workshop phase designed for intelligence-gathering that includes people, operational, environmental drivers. The pre-work means we hit the ground running at the main event.
Alignment: We assess the level of alignment with your team and culture ahead of the main event (during discovery), resolving issues and disconnects during the workshop to ensure that what you do is going to get you where you want to go.
Pathfinding: With all the cards on the table, the main planning event is all about problem-solving and strategy-building. We don't jump right into goals - we take time to understand what is really getting in the of success (from discovery work), define strategic imperatives around purpose, growth, and evolution, and then we build strategy to bridge the gaps. This results in the core plan - vision/mission, strategic imperatives with risk appetite and measures of success, and key goals to support them.
Performance: The last stage of the main planning event is where the plan to execute the strategy is created at a tactical level, addressing champions, resources, timelines, commuication plans, and reporting cadence.
Defining Risk Appetite as Part of Strategy Design
Risk Appetite is one of those terms that everyone knows but few can actually articulate it for their own organization. It's an important part of strategy, but there is very little guidance as to how to actually define and connect it in a meaningful way.
Because the Essential Strategy Formula is designed to clarify imperatives for success as part of the strategy process, it easily expands to defining risk appetite with four carefully crafted questions:
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How much do we invest before the cost is too great? (purpose)
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How fast can we get there without sacrificing existing value? (growth)
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To what extent are we willing to change? (evolution)
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What threats have the potential to disrupt the critical path? (equilibrium)
Why it Works
People inherently understand the concepts of purpose, growth, and evolution within their own lives. Connecting these things to business is where the magic happens.
Essential Strategy is what I call a quantum intelligent approach, capturing the reality of the organization as a living thing that operates according to the laws of quantum physics and complexity science. We apply these concepts to the organization in a tactical way, creating common cause, fostering intentional growth, and making space for continual, adaptive learning in a natural evolutionary process.
QI Strategy is easy to understand and easy to apply
It embraces the natural creativity and problem-solving capability of a people driven system
It enhances – not replaces – strategic plans and priorities already in place
It provides an inherent mechanism for prioritizing new opportunties as they emerge
Getting the plan built doesn't mean your done. What comes next is commitment.
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90% of strategic plans fail in implementation. Yours doesn't have to.
Performance Coaching: An Invitation into the 10% Strategy Club
You and your team are the industry experts. What I bring is deep expertise in systems analysis and design to support strategic decision-making and performance. You need someone who has been in the c-suite navigating all things risk and strategy, from operations, to finance, to people. You need someone you can trust to tell you what you need to hear.
If you’re serious about getting to the next level of success, and taking everyone along with you, we should talk.
Push the boundaries and challenge status quo attitudes and outdated assumptions
Break things to build better things when you need to
Foster powerful trusting teams that say exactly what needs to be said so you can succeed