On October 15th, 2024, The KPI Institute hosted an exclusive webinar titled “Navigating the Landscape of Strategy Planning and Execution in the Age of Transformation,” which brought together industry leaders and professionals for an insightful discussion on the latest trends in strategy management.

During the session, The KPI Institute unveiled key findings from the State of Strategy Management Practice Report 2024, focusing on the unique challenges and opportunities faced by organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The webinar provided an in-depth look at the evolving landscape of business planning, performance management systems, and the execution of strategic initiatives, which offer valuable insights for organizations looking to navigate the complexities of transformation in today’s dynamic business environment.

The session featured expert speakers from The KPI Institute and Systaems:

Cristina Mihăiloaie is a Strategy and Performance Management Expert and Chief Operating Officer at The KPI Institute. Her professional background centers on research, product development, and knowledge sharing within strategy and performance management. Over the past 12 years, she has played a key role in establishing best practices and standards for utilizing and maximizing key performance indicators (KPIs) in organizations disseminated through research publications, academic articles, and educational programs.

Bori Péntek is a Management Consultant at Systaems who specializes in organizational development and human resource management. She assists businesses in aligning their strategies, processes, and practices with their core values, prioritizing human and social well-being. With a background in recruitment, human resources, and operations management across various sectors, including sustainable construction, research, and education. She is an Associate Lecturer at Babes Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Webinar highlights

The webinar’s agenda centered on the key dilemmas organizations face in strategy planning, performance management, and execution, providing valuable insights into the challenges that often  hinder effective strategy implementation.

Dilemma 01: Deliberate vs. Emergent Strategic Planning. The State of Strategy Management Practice – 2024 MENA Region report indicates that 76% of professionals claim to have formal and regular strategy planning and 56% of respondents review strategy annually or every 3 years. Given these statistics and Cristina’s experience as an advisor, she pointed out that the predominant practice in the MENA region is Deliberate Strategy Planning. Further to the discussion, Bori shared her perspective on why Deliberate Strategy Planning is complicated to achieve success, “Mostly it [Deliberate Strategy Planning] offers an illusion of stability that it is not there anymore in the external or internal environment. A lot of things have to work very well for the deliberate strategy to work.”

Dilemma 02: Balanced Scorecard System vs. Objectives and Key Results Frameworks. Since common challenges in working with KPIs for MENA organizations imply difficulties in selecting relevant KPIs, to ensure alignment and collect data, the discussion between our experts led to questioning if a particular framework is better suited to address these challenges. Bori outlined, “Irrespective of whether you use Balanced Scorecard (BSC) or Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), you’re going to have these challenges. It’s not about selecting one system and just going along with it. It’s about leveraging the strength of each system by thinking wisely about where they can be used.”

Dilemma 03: Success vs. Failure in Strategy Execution. Insights from the State of Strategy Management Practice – 2024 MENA Region report show that most respondents (42%) listed ineffective cross-functional collaboration as the top reason for strategy failure. It is followed by a lack of leadership support (40%), slow decision-making and approval 33%), and insufficient resources for projects to succeed (33%). 

To address cross-functional collaboration, Cristina advised nurturing the right “rituals:” “Procedures become quickly obsolete, but rituals are what we do and how we do it, are the unwritten rules that govern the workplace. It’s not necessarily about the work procedure, it is more about how people come together and  get things done.” She added that the rituals we want to build are to create multidisciplinary teams rather than work in silos, to have regular performance meetings and use KPIs to understand the business better, to challenge ourselves constructively, and to promote transparency and collaboration in problem-solving.

The webinar ended with a question-and-answer session where the featured speakers addressed questions about the link between strategy and culture, underestimated factors for strategy execution success, the risk of not aligning KPIs across the organization and many more. An extended Q&A document is currently being prepared for release with extremely interesting perspectives.

From key findings in the State of Strategy Management Practice Report 2024 to practical advice on overcoming obstacles in strategy management, the webinar provided valuable takeaways for organizations looking to stay ahead in today’s fast-paced business environment.

If you missed the live session, watch the full video of the webinar on The KPI Institute’s official YouTube channel. Click here to watch the webinar now!

The KPI Institute is excited to invite you to an exclusive webinar titled “Navigating the Landscape of Strategy Planning and Execution in the Age of Transformation” on the 15th of October 2024 at 11:00 AM (Gulf Standard Time), live online via Zoom.

In this session, The KPI Institute will unveil the latest developments in strategy planning and execution, with a focus on organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This event will also reveal recent findings from the State of Strategy Management Practice Report 2024. The KPI Institute will dive into the most pressing issues surrounding business planning, performance management systems, and the implementation of strategic initiatives.

Meet the speakers

Cristina Mihăiloaie 

Strategy and Performance Management Expert 

Chief Operating Officer, The KPI Institute 

Mihăiloaie’s professional background centers on research, product development, and knowledge sharing within strategy and performance management. Over the past 12 years, she has played a key role in establishing best practices and standards for utilizing and maximizing key performance indicators (KPIs) in organizations disseminated through research publications, academic articles, and educational programs.

Passionate about effective strategy planning and performance measurement practices, Mihăiloaie has provided advisory services to organizations in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, and has trained executives across various functions and industries. Currently, she serves as the Chief Operating Officer of The KPI Institute’s Research Division, where she oversees and ensures the alignment of operations with strategy.

Bori Péntek 

Management Consultant, Systaems 

Associate Lecturer, Babes Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Péntek is a management consultant who specializes in organizational development and human resource management. She assists businesses in aligning their strategies, processes, and practices with their core values, prioritizing human and social well-being.

With a background in recruitment, human resources, and operations management across various sectors, including sustainable construction, research, and education, Péntek focuses on improving employee well-being, promoting inclusive cultures, and ensuring organizational resilience and social responsibility. She creates solutions to tackle systemic challenges and foster long-term success.

In her partnership with Babes Bolyai University, she teaches courses such as research methodology, intercultural communication, and self-awareness.

What’s in store for participants

Combining research expertise with practical experience, the guest speakers will provide valuable insights and guidance on key organizational dilemmas and explore innovative solutions in today’s complex business landscape. The webinar’s agenda focuses on Deliberate vs. Emergent Strategic Planning, BSC vs. OKRs, and Success vs. Failure in Strategy Execution. 

In addition to being the first to receive the latest State of Strategy Management Practice Report and gaining insights into current trends in strategy management that can impact organizational planning and execution, participants will engage with seasoned professionals who offer valuable experience to the discussion. They will also take part in lively discussions on contemporary business challenges which provides an opportunity to share perspectives and connect with peers. 

Whether you are a seasoned leader, an emerging expert, or new to the field, this is your chance to learn about how to stay ahead in the rapidly changing world of strategy management. Seats are limited so secure your spot now! To register, click HERE.

Amidst a sea of strategic frameworks and performance modulations, aligning your organizational strategies with validated, global insights is akin to following a lighthouse that guides you toward informed, impactful decision-making. With that in mind, The KPI Institute (TKI) invites you to join our exclusive webinar meticulously crafted for leaders, strategists, and innovators like you. 

The webinar will be held on Nov. 14, 2023, at 7:00 PM (KSA) and is designed to give participants the tools they need to navigate through the crucial findings of TKI’s “State of Strategy Management Practice Report 2023.” The report is a comprehensive research study conducted by TKI, which echoes the current state, challenges, and tactics of organizations across the globe. This webinar will not merely present data, but it will also help you understand how to weave these insights into the very fabric of your strategic endeavors.

What can you expect?

• In-depth insights: Discover key findings from the research report that unveil current and future trends in strategic planning, measurement, and execution.
• Expert narratives: Engage with our seasoned strategy and performance management expert who offers actionable advice to overcome challenges and bolster organizational practices.
• Interactive dialogue: Participate in a rich, collaborative Q&A session, and glean insights from our expert on your topics of interest.

Who is this for?

• Executives and managers who are navigating through the complex webs of decision-making and organizational leadership
• Strategy planning professionals who seek to enhance the depth and impact of their strategy management tools and practices
• Corporate performance management managers who are looking to align organizational performance measurement with emerging global trends and insights
• Business consultants who aim to provide their clientele with informed, data-backed guidance that elevates the effectiveness of performance management systems

Participant gift bag

What’s in the bag? Participants will receive the following gifts:

• State of Strategy Management Practice Report 2023: Access the full report including practical recommendations.
• The Human Resources Performance Scorecard Template: Benefit from a pre-populated performance scorecard that can be populated with other functional area examples or corporate-level objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs).

About the speaker

The webinar will be presented by Cristina Mihăiloaie, a Strategy and Performance Management Expert and the Business Unit Manager of Research Programs at TKI.

Her professional experience embeds research skills with performance management consulting and practical strategy development and execution for TKI’s research division.

In the last 10 years, Cristina has contributed to the development of best practices and standards for using and leveraging KPIs that are taught in the premium certifications of TKI worldwide. She has assisted large organizations in industries like oil and gas, the financial sector, telecommunications, manufacturing, and utilities.

She conducts maturity assessments for strategy and performance management systems and has trained over 500 professionals, gaining first-hand experience on the most stringent issues that organizations are facing.

Join the webinar

Embark on a journey of strategic elevation, where your actions and decisions are not just informed but transformed by a reservoir of global insights and trends. Click the link below to secure your spot in a webinar that promises to reshape your strategic outlook and empower your forward trajectory.

Secure my spot.

Editor’s Note: This article is written by Paolo Orduña, a Senior Editor at The KPI Institute, and originally published in the PERFORMANCE Magazine Issue No. 26, 2023 – Data Analytics Edition.

The KPI Institute successfully hosted a forum on global trends that will impact strategy and performance management practices in 2023. Dubbed “2023 Business Pulse: 5 Trends Impacting Strategy and Performance Management,” the event was hosted by the TKI Research Division’s business unit manager, Cristina Mihailoaie, and data expert, Islam Salahuddin.

The webinar covered trends in the realms of geopolitics, economics, society and culture, technology, and sustainability. Through careful analysis of these trends, our experts identified the most possible trajectories that will shape the future of strategy and performance management:

• There will be a greater need for more resilient strategies and agile performance management.
• More companies will realize the need for a data strategy that allows for robust data governance.
• Automation will produce better performance results.
• Performance improvement will be achieved through upskilling and reskilling.
• Performance improvement hinges on continuous learning.
• Employee performance management will be reshaped in an employee-centric approach.

“As Peter Drucker said, ‘The best way to predict the future is to create it,’ and this seminar has equipped our participants with the knowledge and understanding to do just that,” said Cristina.

If you have a yearning for learning strategy and performance management skills, you may want to check out our courses. Arm yourselves with the knowledge that you need to successfully ride the business world’s ever-changing trends here.

In 1992, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the balanced scorecard (BSC) to the private sector as a method for measuring performance beyond financial outcomes. This tool reflects the four major dimensions of an organization: financial, customer, internal processes, learning, and growth.

According to Kaplan and Norton, BSC translates a company’s strategic objectives into coherent performance measures using a comprehensive framework. Moreover, they believe that BSCs can lead to “breakthrough improvements” in the areas of product, process, customer, and market development.

In her article titled “The Balanced Scorecard: Outsmarting design and implementation traps,” Marcela Presecan, head of research, explained the 10 areas that must be examined before using BSC in an organization: strategy drafting, management identity, bureaucracy, employee perception, communication without understanding, lack of common vocabulary, getting over the experimental scorecard, standardizing balanced scorecard design, adapting to the business environment, and commitment of the organization. “When implemented with its full potential in mind, the balanced scorecard is one of the best reflections of an organization’s contribution to the real operating environment,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, Manoj Dubey, a consultant at TKI, argued in an article that the concept of BSC must be revisited. “The perspectives of BSC, especially internal processes and learning and growth, should evaluate the quality aspects of an organization in Industry 4.0. It should ensure that strategy formulation, strategy execution, and performance measurement system are aligned to new technologies,” he wrote. “A traditional approach of BSC leads to fixed or orthodox KPIs which are not relevant in today’s technological scenario. The concept should revolve around improving processes using the latest IT; this includes having new KPIs.”

To get more perspectives and information on BSC, check out this specially curated resources.

Articles

• How Apple uses the balanced scorecard
• The balanced scorecard of Philips
• How to use a balanced scorecard in a board’s performance evaluation
• The balanced scorecard: review and criticism
• Insights on developing a bank’s balanced scorecard

Webinar

Understanding the components of the Balanced Scorecard System – Following a performance management process, the final step regarding a company’s key performance indicators (KPIs) after data gathering is reporting and decision-making. It is crucial that this step is done correctly, as it has an important impact on how organizations utilize KPIs to inform decisions. The focus will be on understanding proper reporting guidelines, along with using business analysis techniques for better decision-making and improved initiatives for performance enhancement.

Certification

The KPI Institute’s Certified Balanced Scorecard Management System Professional provides participants with relevant knowledge on how to develop and implement a balanced scorecard system. It also offers a comprehensive overview on the many benefits any organization can extract from the BSC system implementation. Sign up here.

Advisory Services

Through The KPI Institute’s advisory team, organizations and professionals have access to a diverse range of services from KPI advisory calls to complex performance management systems implementation spread over 12 different practice areas, including BSC. If you want to improve your current level of performance using a clear and concise toolset, the BSC is the answer. TKI’s experts and consultants are here to support you in this performance management journey by developing and implementing the BSC system down to the employee level. Learn more here.

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.

New year, new me, right? What better time of the year than the early few months to get ahead of everyone else, by tuning in to the first webinar episode of the year. After several weeks of deliberation, we’ve finally decided that the best way to start off 2020 is by introducing our viewers to something traditional, akin to our namesake.

Now, we do understand that one size doesn’t fit all, and as a result, KPIs appear in the organizational world in accordance with strategic intentions. Therefore, there’s no preformatted recipe for them.

Nevertheless, among them, there are some which will indefinitely keep their value over time. In the performance management and business strategy field, KPIs are some of the main tools at hand.

In this webinar, we will be exploring KPI examples that are popular, rarely get out of use and will be reflected in the KPIs Architecture, one way or another. They will be addressed based
on the traditional Balanced Scorecard perspectives: Financial, Customers, Internal Processes, People Learning and Growth.

Main topics covered

• What are KPIs and how do they make a difference?
• KPIs examples that rarely lose importance
• KPIs Lifecycle: Evolution stage
• Tools for KPIs utilization

What you will learn?

• The definition, purpose, calculation and collection method for popular KPI examples;
• What happens with KPIs in the long run, as possible scenarios of their Evolution stage;
• An exposure of tools where KPIs make their appearance.

Presenter’s profile

Raluca Vintila is a Performance Management Consultant, at The KPI Institute, dedicated to the PMS Architecture at the Organizational, Divisional and Individual level, as well as a facilitator of the flagship program, Certified KPI Professional.

Some of the most significant consultancy projects she has been involved in include the following: Performance Management System Architecture Design (Organizational, Divisional and Individual level) and Organizational KPI Selection for organizations operating in the oil & gas, transportation, telecommunication and education industries.

So far, Raluca’s training and advisory sessions count has reached 22 countries, on 4 continents and 3,500 participants.