How many times has this happened to you in your organisations?
You have invested a lot of time and money in preparing a strategic plan.
You ended up with a strategic plan that you could be justifiably proud of, that laid out a clear vision for your organisation, clear goals and objectives, and detailed strategies.
Then something seems to happen - or in fact, nothing seems to happen!
Somehow, over time, the strategies don't get implemented, or they are half-finished, or at the end, they seem to have evolved into something that was not in the strategic plan.
Here's how to move from formulating strategy to implementing strategy.
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The Business Planning Formula
Indigenous businesses (or indeed Indigenous not-for-profit community-controlled organisations) must prepare business plans.
This is not because they are Indigenous but because every organisation that wishes to grow must be in control of where it wants to go and how it gets there!
It's common sense - would you go on a holiday without a plan in mind? You don't just jump in the car and decide to go - you booked some time off ("when"), you decided what you wanted to do on holiday ("what") which helped you decide where to go to do it ("where") and you decided who would come ("who").
Yet, why would you start your family business or social venture without a plan?
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Make Your Indigenous Corporation Board “Smarter”
If all the Directors on your Board and all the other leaders in your Indigenous corporation are of a similar profile, it's time to expand your ideas about diversity.
Diversity is not just about balancing the genders and the ages because if all your Directors share the same background - hard not to in an Indigenous context - you need more diversity for better all-round decision-making processes.
Indigenous corporations have evolved from "associations" incorporated under the old Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act 1976. They now have their own Corporations Act (the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006) which was intentionally drafted to mirror the mainstream Corporations Act 2001 along with the duties, responsibilities and penalties attached to mainstream corporate governance.
Indigenous corporations have had to deal with more complex and non-local issues, particularly as many hold important assets as Native Title PBC's or as commercial arms of Native Title determinations and other royalty agreements. As a result, the perspectives that Directors need in decision-making have also evolved. While the need to remain connected to cultural imperatives and understand the stakeholders is still a key factor in all Boards' decisions, increasingly, Indigenous Boards need to understand the Law, Agreement-making, commercial opportunity, financial...
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Create Systems and Procedures for Your Office
For many Indigenous corporations, there is a huge gap between what management knows should be done, and what actually gets done.
Substantial management time is taken, particularly in administrative matters, reinventing the wheel, doing the same thing in different ways, taking longer to do something that was done efficiently yesterday, and making mistakes along the way.
But imagine if your corporation were a business franchise. Have you ever seen a good franchise like McDonald's or Coffee Club produce different products from store to store? No matter where you go or when you go, everything happens exactly the same way, taking exactly the same time, producing exactly the same result.
How do you get those outcomes for your corporation?
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