Focus and Strategy

From visits to various organisations, we have observed that many organisations are like alcoholics..... Alcoholics find it difficult to leave their drinking habits. Similarly, organisations too cannot leave their habits of clinging to operational silos. Daily urgencies and crisis are expected, attended and promoted than the important activities of business. Business connection is lost in many the organisations.  Operations are meant to drive business, but operations, in course of time, engulfs business and the very purpose of business is hijacked. We bring this anomaly to the notice of the key players of business. Even being aware of this predicament , the people in the organisation cannot get out of their habit of fighting daily urgencies and crisis.

Many say we need to form business strategy, but there is no time. they often say ... Let us finish this project and then we shall sit for forming business strategy. Most business owners and key players fail to take action on strategy but keep on continuing their operational routines.

Second factor that hinder the wished growth is the lack of clarity about overall strategy We have lost count of cases in which well-intentioned project managers waste their time and energy on initiatives that senior managers felt, this is not our priority, even when the same senior persons have approved the initiatives.

Still another observation is that ,  lot of good companies waste enormous amounts o resources on too many projects that had too little focus.

Our business facilitation workshops attempts to overcome these problems by establishing shared awareness and focus of the business. 

Lasting change through crisis

Prevention of crisis is much advised and of course we must do everything to prevent it. But if it occurs, we need preparation to gain from it. Many families, young couples, close friends, colleagues etc have reported  that their past crisis, very deep ones, have helped then to form deeper bonds with each other  Attempting to contain or overcome a crisis brings people together. That is one of the positive value of crisis.

This phenomenon is equally good for business teams too.  The teams that have found ways to overcome crisis and worked together to get over it have found to be having better working relationships and bonding. Crisis gives an opportunity to know each other at deeper levels and to lean to adjust with each other.

Crisis also gives us an opportunity to break from the outdated habits, renew our perspectives and learn new courses of actions.

We facilitate to create conflicts and crisis in our business facilitation services that the team of key players emerge strong and are clear about the strategy. Though we provoke to create conflicts , we are competent to avoid unhealthy interpersonal rub offs and lead to healthy and long lasting outputs.

Experiencing conflicts and resolving it is the stepping stones to growth.


contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu

Benefits and advantages of Chai Board

Chai Board is the tool we use in facilitating DNA crafting (strategy Development). Flip charts and the marker pens are the usual tools that we use in the facilitation process. We have observed that this simple process brings certain significant and important value to the key players who are participating in the Chai Boards (DNA sessions).  

Some of the conspicuous ones are….

It brings Focus: Because everyone is looking at one display: the flip charts, the key players do not have many different versions inside their own imaginations. Slowly shared awareness and understanding is built. This shared understanding forms the basis for future social capital needed for the business growth.

It promotes camaraderie: The participants begin to feel they are part of one team. The provocative, interactive, engaging qualities of working with flipcharts and dialoging are found to be more effective at supporting relationship building, trust, and participation than pushy PPT presentations and lectures.

It prevents fragmentation: Fragmentation suggests a condition in which the people involved see themselves as more separate than united, and in which direction and focus are scattered. It is a phenomenon that pulls apart business that is whole. We have found that fragmentation is hidden, intangible and people in the organization do not even realize that there are incompatible tacit assumptions about the business and each key person believes that his or her understanding is complete and is shared by all.  Our flip chart display is a direct support to common findings, and allows the key players to aggregate and analyze the issues on a common platform. Most of the outputs that the key players are making in understanding the dynamics of their business are from displaying on flipcharts and dialoguing on the issue. This process prevents fragmentation but enhances shared understanding. This is key to business growth, without this it is less probable.

It allows easy follow-through: Connecting everyone’s activity over time is essential to producing anything. The difference between relying on everyone’s individual perception and having a shared schedule and road map everyone buys-in is night and day. The output flipcharts allow the key players to brief themselves, remind, repeat the matters of business, support after-action reviews, and document key outputs for broadcasting to others in the organization.

Contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu