Editor’s Note: Below is an excerpt from the article “Key Drivers for Strategic Planning in a Post-pandemic Business Environment,” written by Daniela Vuta and published in the latest edition of Performance Magazine. It presents trends, solutions, and best practices for strategy and performance management through in-depth articles, first-hand how-to’s, concept presentations, case studies, and expert insights.

The business landscape has always been complex and dynamic. Organizations use strategic frameworks and business models validated through practice to cope with an ever-changing environment. But this was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to radical and disruptive changes across industries. 

The European Business Review identified six essential forces driving change into the world of business: impactful technology, demographic change, rapid urbanization, amplified individuals, economic power shifts to climate, and resource security.  

“For years, we have been hearing and talking about the impending VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world,” wrote Quy Huy, INSEAD Professor of Strategic Management, in an article for INSEAD Knowledge. “Over and over again, we were told to prepare for the seismic change that was sure to arrive, to boost agility in anticipation of abrupt, profound disruption.”

“COVID-19 was a misfortune long foreseen; only the dates and other specific details were missing. Now that the whole world has experienced the VUCA that only emerging markets used to face, it can never again be treated as an abstraction,” Huy added.

Many organizations are still relying on the five-year plan as a strategic framework, but this type of planning, while proven to be useful in the past, may not be feasible today. It puts business leaders in a reactive mode when responding to business events. Given these conditions, what are the key drivers that executives will need to consider in strategic planning for the years to come? 

According to Euromonitor’s Voice of the Industry: Lifestyles Survey 2020, corporate strategy planning and recovery should rely on three main pillars: consumer, digital investment, and sustainability. Findings from the study showed that the most common strategic objectives for 2021 among the interviewed companies were focused on recovery and growth, brand image, technology investment, and organizational structure redesign, mostly by transforming operations for greater agility and flexibility. 

The capacity to identify drivers that might compromise the organization’s long-term profitability or determine strategic success in the future is going to be critical. For decision-makers, this will imply both questioning long-standing assumptions and future visions in a systematic way. Nonetheless, making predictions for an uncertain future and integrating them into strategic decisions is not an easy endeavor.

Want to understand the importance of prediction, adaptability, and resilience; digitalization; and agile integration to businesses in the post-pandemic world? Read the rest of the article in the latest edition of Performance Magazine  Download your FREE COPY now!

Editor’s Note: Below is an excerpt from the article “The Challenge to the C-Suite: How to Build Execution Into Strategy,” written by Adia Manea and published in the latest edition of Performance Magazine. It presents trends, solutions, and best practices for strategy and performance management through in-depth articles, first-hand how-to’s, concept presentations, case studies, and expert insights.

Strategies remain strategies until they are executed. Why is it hard for some organizations to translate what transpires in the boardroom into action?

Only 3% of the 1,526 business professionals who responded to a global survey commissioned by the American Management Association in 2019 said that their organizations were “very successful” at executing strategies.

In today’s business climate, it is critical to adopt a performance management system that makes the parts of an organization operating asynchronously to stick together like puzzle pieces. This leads to real initiatives for change and supports decision makers as they forge ahead or change course as necessary. 

A Roadmap for Results

How can leaders build execution into strategy and generate results from strategy analysis and planning? First, let’s assess the existing challenges. Although there are hundreds of failed strategies, they do not serve as a lesson. Nevertheless, researchers noticed a list of issues that stamped the misalignment of activities to corporate strategy over the years. According to Forbes, unclear communication and priorities, the lack of coordination across units, the silo behavior (unwillingness of a group to share information with another group), resistance to change, and the lack of performance culture are persistent factors that shift away the efficiency of execution from the strategy plan. 

The silo behavior prevents organizations from becoming agile, and this aspect still dominates the corporate culture. Only 9% of managers say that they can rely on colleagues in the company all the time, according to a research conducted by Harvard Business Review (HBR). Unfortunately, when confronted with this perspective, the need to compensate appears, but the result undermines the strategy as without help, they duplicate efforts, overdue the deadline or cannot meet promises made to customers. 

The same study shows that 30% of managers recognize that the failure of coordination across departments increases the chances for the performance commitments to not be reached. It also intervenes in the poor quality of performance culture as it may not promote support among units. The resistance to adapt to market circumstances is a major obstacle for an effective execution. But companies do not always fail to adapt at all. 

The problem is that most organizations react slowly to the change so there is a risk of not being able to embrace fleeting opportunities. Being reluctant to change activates the incapacity of mitigating emerging threats or even losing sight of the strategic direction.

Designing a performance management architecture leads to a bird’s view of the actual context and progress of projects or processes conducted internally. By approaching a set of performance management practices, a better structure, alignment, integration, and use of what is already in place will dominate the organizational context. In other words, the organizational strategy is digested through an integrated performance management system.

Companies must develop a strategy execution framework that aligns projects with initiatives to achieve their desired results. The project-based work is composed of activities that bring the organizational state closer to specific goals. By looking into project portfolios, one can assess the strategies in which the company chose to invest. The aim of the strategy execution framework is to align the project portfolios with the strategy. Once implemented, the framework adds a filter to the way management leads and executes in the sense that the steps taken are towards executing the strategy and not just walking around it.

Now, what is the connection between the performance management system and the strategy execution framework? Imagine the process of strategy execution as an octopus. The head is the performance management system in which the strategy is fragmented through the vision, mission, values, objectives and initiatives, while the arms are the projects conducted in portfolios that convey the alignment of resources and align with the overall strategy.

Discover how organizations can overcome strategy execution challenges by reading the rest of the article in the latest edition of Performance Magazine. Download your FREE COPY now!

Big data now plays a crucial role in every business’ success. Through the application of analytics, data analysis is allowing businesses to become even more competitive. 

Organizations adopt big data and analytics to analyze massive volumes of data generated by offline and online trading. Based on the Big Data & Business Analytics Market Statistics 2030, the value of the global big data and business analytics market is estimated to increase to $684.12 billion by 2030 from $198.08 billion in 2020. 

The goal of data analysis is to extract meaningful information and use it to make informed business decisions. By analyzing and comparing previous and new data, organizations can understand what happened in between. Then, organizations can come up with metrics and action plans to drive their performance. It involves boosting customer loyalty, increasing sales, improving and retaining successful practices, and enhancing employee productivity.

According to a PwC poll of 1,000 corporate executives, data-driven firms were three times more likely to achieve big gains in their decision-making capabilities. 

A data-first approach is required for a digital-first enterprise strategy. In a multi-cloud context, a well-planned data strategy for a digital company gives “business transformation opportunities, cost reduction, better engagement, and maximum flexibility.”

To get the most out of data, organizations must create an effective data analysis process. This procedure entails objective setting, data collection, cleaning and analyzing data, and data visualization.

Before collecting data, defining the goals of the organization is important. Businesses can choose the type of data to collect and evaluate it to ensure it is aligned with their goals. Then, businesses must integrate data using tools such as Informatica PowerCenter, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) by Microsoft, AWS Glue by Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Alteryx Designer.. 

All data must be gathered in one place to be examined. Companies must clean their data by removing irrelevant and unwanted information, fixing structural errors, and filling out the missing data in order to produce accurate findings. To better understand the data, organizations should use data analysis software and other technologies. 

Some data analysis software available are XLSTAT, the leading data analysis and statistical solution for Microsoft Excel; Python, a powerful tool consisting of materials for any aspect of scientific computing; and SAS, a statistical software for business intelligence and data management.

To acquire useful insights, businesses should dive deep into the data. They should analyze and narrow down the results of the gathered data to draw conclusions. Then, organizations must interpret the results to figure out the best next steps to reach the goals established in the beginning of the process.

Organizations should deliver information in a readable and understandable format. Businesses can present data using graphs, maps, and charts. Data visualization can help companies compare data sets and observe their relationships.

Data analysis helps anticipate future trends more precisely, allowing organizations to determine where they are headed and what they need to get there.

To learn more about data analysis, explore The KPI Institute’s reports and free webinars and stay tuned for the next schedule of the Certified Data Analysis Live Online Course.

Benchmarking is a powerful management tool used by businesses to track progress and assess their goals. It involves measuring the company’s operational performance compared against internal and external standards. 

Benchmarking is also about researching best practices in the industry to help a company reach a high-ranking performance level. It allows organizations to build a solid starting point.

Andrea Minelli, a management consultant at The KPI Institute, wrote an article on Performance Magazine about why companies must invest in benchmarking. He stressed that benchmarking has the potential to be a “powerful tool to promote continuous improvement in performance.”

Andrea explained that benchmarking allows businesses to concentrate on their advantages and disadvantages. It also enables them to increase their market position.

In another article on Performance Magazine, benchmarking enables businesses to compare performance data collected by analyzing identical processes or activities carried out by other businesses. The process of benchmarking lets organizations discover, adapt, and replicate the strategies that created the greatest outcomes for their best competitors.

According to the author, Andrada Ghețe, benchmarking supports the idea “that performance numbers can mean less when analyzed without having a point of reference (a benchmark) as a comparison starting point.”

“For example, in the airline industry, an airline company has a turnaround time of 55 minutes. Is it good, or bad? It is hard to find the answer, unless you compare this 55 minutes turnaround time to an objective standard, such as the industry average turnaround time for other airline companies,” Ghete wrote.

According to Business News Daily, the three most common types of benchmarking are Internal, Competitive, and Strategic.

Internal benchmarking refers to conducting comparisons within an organization. It can help a company save time and money by identifying and eliminating waste. Employee performance and effectiveness, as well as how employees use the resources supplied by the company, are examples of internal benchmarks that firms should consider. яндекс

Competitive benchmarking allows businesses to compare their company’s performance, product, and services against their competitors in the same market. Competitive benchmarks let companies catch up with the trends and adjust their marketing strategies to have a competitive advantage.

Strategic benchmarking refers to taking “a long-term view of company direction relative to the future strategies of competing companies.”

If you would like to know more about how your organization can benefit from benchmarking, join The KPI Institute’s Certified Benchmarking Professional Live Online on 18-22 April 2022.

Understand the importance of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your best competitor. Learn how to constantly improve the performance of your organization. Know the difference benchmarking can make in your business  and register here.

Today, March 08, the world is celebrating International Women’s Day. While women are winning in different fields, some are still struggling with taking roles as leaders, meeting expectations, and enjoying equal opportunities in the workplace.

According to the United Nations, fair division of wages, unpaid labor, and having an equal share of men and women in the labor force are the common factors affecting the goal of having gender equality at work.

At The KPI Institute, women are accomplishing various feats in different fields. To celebrate their valuable contributions to our community this month, we invited five of them to share their inspiring stories and thoughts on empowering women and supporting gender equality in the workplace.

Daniela Vuta is a business research analyst at the TKI Research Division. She is in charge of the development of TKI’s Top KPI Series and serves as a technical editor for the PERFORMANCE Magazine – Print Edition and its website, performancemagazine.org.

Raluca Vintila is a Management Consultant and has been working at The KPI Institute for over eight years. She will launch the newest edition of the Certified KPI Practitioner Live Online Course  on 07-09 March 2022. Sign up here.

Iulia Tutulan is a Senior Customer Engagement Specialist. She is most passionate about sharing her knowledge in people or employee performance. For her next Live Online Course, follow and stay tuned on The KPI Institute’s LinkedIn page. 

Carmen Boboc works as Partnership Manager at The KPI Institute. To know more about partnerships and to join TKI’s growing Global Partnership Network, visit this link.

Roxana Barb is the head of Educational Programs at the Lereroworld Division. The KPI Institute offers different online certification programs, online training courses, and webinars to help clients’ professional development. For more information, visit TKI eLearning here.

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What Women Face in the Workplace

When asked about the common issues that women face in the workplace, the interviewees point out how a woman’s role in her family affects her career and employment. 

Roxana said that some companies are still keen on not hiring women because of their caregiving responsibilities. 

Iulia has the same sentiment, stressing that women act as their family’s caregivers and providers at the same time. She added that returning from maternity leave is another challenge for women. In hiring, she believes that asking women in a job interview if they plan to have children in the future is irrelevant. 

Carmen said that “Companies should hire men and women and give them the same chances to promote equality. People should be hired based on their qualifications, experience, desire to learn, and if they are suitable or not for the job.”

Working at The KPI Institute

As conversations on women empowerment at work linger, the efforts to increase gender diversity within companies are evident in the past years. This is beneficial for organizations too. The McKinsey & Company Diversity Wins Report 2020 suggests that “companies whose boards are in the top quartile of gender diversity are 28 percent more likely than their peers to outperform financially.”

Daniela and Raluca expressed their appreciation for what they are experiencing at The KPI Institute. 

Daniela, who started her journey in the company three and half years ago, said that she is able to achieve work-life balance in her role: “Growing within my career as a researcher has been beautifully combined with my personal development goals. Each new project or task I have to perform creates a new opportunity for me to develop intellectually, emotionally, and even spiritually. Our working environment and organizational culture make it easy for me to set and respect healthy boundaries, thus constantly achieving a work-life balance.”

“I can say that one of the things I appreciate most at The KPI Institute is the freedom and flexibility to explore opportunities, solutions, and activities. It’s a delight to be part of an organizational culture that is ready to accommodate changes and can afford to support its team members’ preferences,” said Raluca.

Celebrating Women’s Day

When asked about the importance of International Women’s Day, Iulia said it is “a celebration of life.”

She finds that fitting because “women are the ones giving birth to life, and it is also in spring. But now that I think of it, with more experienced eyes I hope, I see the joy that usually women bring to the world. I see warriors that fight for their rights. I see so many amazing women that are actually moving mountains in the name of love – love for their projects, for their loved ones, or for their beliefs.”

For Carmen, International Women’s Day is important to recognize and celebrate women’s achievements as well as their extraordinary acts to fight for their rights and gender equality. 

Roxana considers Women’s Day as a day to remind everyone about the roles women play in their lives: “as a friend, girlfriend, wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, and an employee.” 

Advice for Young Women

What one piece of advice would they give to a young woman just starting to build her career?

“Explore, explore, explore! Moreover, create opportunities. I think an open mind is what matters most in any career journey,” said Raluca.

“Believe in yourself and your inner strength. Be perseverant and ambitious, and you can achieve anything!” said Carmen.

Meanwhile, Daniela emphasized the importance of having mentors and learning from different situations. ”Learn from every situation no matter how hard or easy it is…. I would encourage her to stay confident and perseverant, and success will naturally follow,” she said.

Roxana believes that taking things step by step and being patient with the process is part of one’s journey to success. “Learn from your mistakes as they are lessons to be learned, not failures,” she added.

Iulia notices that many young women are starting their careers early “with the need to fight, to stand up, to be sure that they have a place at the table.” She believes that they should also take time to “re-evaluate their motivation, to search for their passion, and to use that fire wisely because each of us is unique, and they need to find their uniqueness. And this can be done only by gaining experience.”

“One of the things that actually helped me in my career is this idea of never giving up – learning from yourself, from others, from coaching sessions, and certifications. You have to keep learning and be patient. You never know what this will lead to. I am actually a big fan of the quote ‘Learn before you Earn,’” she said.

Iulia also wants young women to not forget about themselves as they reach for their dreams. “Honor yourself, your spare time, your need to do your hobbies, your passions. Spend time with your loved ones. The career will be there, but moments with loved ones might vanish. When building a career, make sure you build one that can serve you and help you even later in life. That means to do something that you like, something you see yourself doing for most of your adult life.”

Dear partners and beloved community,

On behalf of The KPI Institute, I would like to wish you all a wonderful spring and success in all your projects!

The first part of the year, as well as the beginning of a new season, brings a plus of energy in our lives, and hopefully, we can use this positive vibe to improve the organizations we are part of and to contribute to making the world a better place.

As we look forward to the challenges and opportunities 2022 has for us, I invite you to reflect on the latest practice in strategy and performance management by exploring the first printed edition of PERFORMANCE Magazine this year.  

You will find valuable insights related to adapting strategy to highly volatile business environments and structuring better performance management-related processes and tools. You will discover how employee performance is managed by modern organizations, trends in business analytics, and success stories from the public sector around the world.

For the Cover Story, I presented the highlights of The KPI Institute’s 2021 global practices report related to strategic planning, performance measurement, and strategy execution. The full version of the report will be released in April. Follow The KPI Institute’s LinkedIn page and stay tuned for the announcement!

Equipping you with the latest research and industry know-how to achieve performance excellence has always been the core of The KPI Institute’s existence. The latest issue of PERFORMANCE Magazine is just one of the many exciting things we have planned for you this year.

Enjoy reading and thank you for making us a part of your learning journey!

Cristina Mihăiloaie

Business Unit Manager – Research Division

The KPI Institute

Building healthy work relationships is essential for both the employees and their employer when they are building a performance-oriented culture.

Citing several studies on work relationships, SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series shows that high-quality human relationships can impact one’s physical and psychological health, cognitive abilities, thinking capacity, learning, resiliency, commitment, creativity, and organizational citizenship behavior. This means more efficient employee coordination with qualities that support “greater organizational effectiveness and efficiency.”

However, the work setup of most companies changed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world. Organizations moved their operations online, forcing employees to perform their duties and communicate virtually. 

Cultivating professional relationships is not easy in such an environment. Employees connecting virtually rather than face-to-face communication have lesser chances of building relationships, according to a study held by Xiao-Ping Chen, the Philip M. Condit Endowed Chair in Business Administration at the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

Findings showed that it is difficult to understand the nonverbal cues of remote workers, such as facial expressions, hand gestures, silence, or delayed responses. Moreover, most employees struggle with paying attention during a meeting done via video conferencing.

What Organizations Can Do

Increasing resilience in the workplace as people recover from a crisis means giving them purpose and hope, flexibility and adaptability, and connection to their colleagues. Organizations can arrange activities that can help employees stay connected even while working remotely. 

In an interview with CNBC, Jason Fried, CEO of the project management company Basecamp, recommends a daily check-in with colleagues or a time at work where they can share ideas and express support over personal matters.

Meanwhile, education company General Assembly implemented watercooler chat over coffee through video chat rooms. Meg Randall, the director of product delivery for the company’s tech team in New York City, said that those coffee breaks help her mentally start her day. “It’s a small talk that lasts for a few minutes, but it’s a nice ritual if you’re craving that human connection every day, which I have been,” said Randall. 

Trust, transparency, and open communication can also help organizations nurture healthy work relationships. One of the ways this can be tested, particularly between leaders and employees, is performance evaluation. Assessing employee performance has changed due to the pandemic. 

In the online event held by ECCP and HURIS on August 2021, Cristina Mihăiloaie, Business Unit Manager at The KPI Institute, said that the performance criteria used for employee evaluations, whether it involves key performance indicators or not, should be “flexible, easy to adapt to changes, and more focused on the extent to which the role is successfully achieved, compared to looking at operational details.”

“For example, employees who worked from home and multitasked between being a parent and a professional may have missed some meetings, or maybe they seemed more absent during work. Overall, if the output of their job is good, the operational details may be less important,” she said. 

Join Cristina as she delivers the Certified Performance Management Systems Audit Professional Live Online course on 07 – 11 March 2022 / EMEA 18:00 – 22:00 GST and ASEAN 09:00 – 13:00 CST (US).

This 40-hour course will discuss how to diagnose and audit the maturity of performance architectures for five capabilities: strategic planning, performance measurement, performance management, performance culture and employee performance management.

Don’t miss this opportunity to widen your knowledge and experience in employee performance management. You can sign up here.