Get Better Results From Strategic Planning

A former colleague once told me about attending the first meeting with his then-new company. This guy is a bit of a jokester; I thought he was kidding when he said the sole agenda item was to set the schedule for future meetings. He wasn’t.

My guess is that you have weightier matters to discuss in September (and October, November and December). The people I am talking with are discussing ways to maximize total revenues, be it from new digital initiatives or the upcoming political season. I am also hearing a lot about the upcoming FCC spectrum auction and subsequent spectrum repacking. There are a number of questions to be answered and market-by-market analyses to be reviewed to ensure that the resulting plans enable the best possible outcome for each market.

The July-August issue of TFM (The Financial Manager, MFM’s member magazine) includes an article about ways to make these vital planning and brainstorming sessions more effective. It was written by Jane Moyer, president of the talent development firm New Century Leadership. Moyer, who honed her facilitation and planning skills during a 25-year career at HBO, recommends employing the following tactics to enhance idea generation and improve opportunities for implementing the resulting plan:

1.   Choosing Your Team

• Select participants with contribution and collaboration in mind — people who have a genuine interest in the topic and are motivated to find solutions.

• Also include members with different experience, roles and perspectives.

• Keep the group to a size that is conducive to participation — usually eight or fewer.

• Change the group membership occasionally to keep things fresh by bringing in an expert, or conversely, an innovative person who knows little about your topic and assumed boundaries.

• Consider designating a “facilitator,” whose role is to manage the process but not contribute ideas, and a “recorder” to capture all the ideas.

2.   Setting The Stage

• Meeting in a distraction-free space away from everyday tasks is ideal.

• Arrange the group in a semicircle facing “the problem” together. Allow room for participants to move around.

• Be sure your topic is one that (a) warrants the group’s time; (b) would benefit from a creative approach; and (c) is one you’re likely to act on afterwards.

• Develop questions that are broad enough to expand thinking but specific enough to produce practical ideas.

• Circulate the main question in advance to give people a chance to mull it over.

3.   Getting Started

• Provide materials to collect and develop ideas, including materials for individual use — paper, colored note cards, or “backs of envelopes” — as well as materials to build on others’ ideas, such as colored markers, sticky notes, white boards or flip charts.

• Briefly review guidelines with the group, such as generating a volume of ideas, anything goes, not pre-judging any ideas, etc.

• To prompt a greater and faster flow of ideas, set goals (e.g., “Let’s try to generate 20 ideas…”) and time limits (“…in 10 minutes”). If you’re in the midst of an idea cascade, you can always extend the time.

• Incorporate visuals and symbols that trigger humor, playfulness and inspiration.

• Warm up creative thinking with a funny cartoon or video related to your topic.

• Begin your brainstorming question with “How can we…?” to open thinking.

• Before opening up group discussion, give individuals a few minutes of silent reflection to think and jot down their ideas. This helps quieter participants develop their ideas enough to speak up. It also prevents members from simply depending on the efforts of others.

• If there’s a big difference in experience or level, ask the higher-ranking and more experienced participants to hang back initially to encourage others to contribute fresh and unbiased thoughts.

• Ensure the team addresses the underlying issue by articulating, “What we really want is…” and continuing to ask “Why?” until you get to the root reasons.

4.   Sparking Bigger Ideas

• If you’re stuck, use creativity techniques to stimulate ideas. For instance, “piggyback” on ideas that have already been expressed to create variations.

• Ask questions related to a previous suggestion, such as, “What else could we do along the same lines?”

• Challenge assumptions by examining your problem from the perspective of different stakeholders or totally unrelated parties. Examples include how would your customer or a five-year-old view the situation?

• Ideas tend to come in bursts and improve as you go, so keep pushing to get past the obvious.

5.   Translating Ideas Into Action

• Define and execute a follow-up process.

• For a simple issue, you might evaluate ideas immediately and make a decision.

• For more complex and important issues, let the ideas simmer for a short time, provide a means to supplement them and then get back together to refine, combine, cull and evaluate them.

As Moyer observes: “There’s little doubt about it: a well-designed process can help you avoid a brainstorming-gone-bad situation.” If you would like to read more of her advice, as well as some coaching tips from Barbara Kurka, principal of BFKCoaching, a former HR executive from Katz Media Group who serves as an executive and managerial coach and HR consultant, they are included in the July-August 2015 issue of TFM which should be available on our website for another week or two.

If one of your upcoming strategic planning sessions will be focused on addressing the FCC’s Incentive Auction, you may also be interested in participating in MFM’s September Distance Learning Webinar, “Spectrum Auction — Legal and Financial Considerations,” which will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 22, from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. ET.

Our presenters will include David Oxenford, a partner at the law firm of Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP, and publisher of the Broadcast Law Blog; Jonathan V. Cohen, a former FCC auction director who is a now a partner with the same firm specializing in the telecommunications, broadband and media sectors; and Mary Ann Halford, a senior managing director and member of the telecom, media and technology group at FTI Consulting. 

In addition to helping attendees understand incentive auction procedures, the CPE (continuing professional education) event’s learning objectives include improving participants’ ability to discuss the legal and financial issues associated with the spectrum auction and the ability to articulate what they’ll need to know in order to make a decision about a station’s participation.

More information about the Distance Learning Seminar may be found on our website. I invite you to join us on Sept. 22 for the presentation and discussion. Many of the issues to be covered come from questions being raised by MFM’s Television Committee comprising a broad spectrum of station groups with participants from all sizes of TV markets and regions of the country. I’m sure you will find it very helpful in improving your ability to provide your station with insights that will be very helpful when those inevitable and critical meetings appear on your calendar.

Mary M. Collins is president and CEO of the Media Financial Management Association and its BCCA subsidiary. She can be reached at [email protected]. Her column appears in TVNewsCheck every other week. You can read her earlier columns here.