An Appreciative Approach to

Strategic Planning
Bob Roberts
Director of Organization Development
Chicago Region, McDonald’s
&
Jim Ludema
Professor of Organization Development
Benedictine University
Strategic Planning: A key process
to all aspects of business growth
• Determines…
• Degree of Organizational Sickness or
Organizational demise & death and the...
• Degree of Organizational Health
• Competition is getting more aggressive and
bright
• SP is key process toward attaining high
achievement
 Strategic Planning
We need a process that can...
•Have immediate impact on
substantially increasing regional
results
•Assure we will meet or exceed the
Regional 2005 Vision
•Allows us to learn along the way -
the most critical success factor in all
strategic plan accomplishments!
 2005 Vision is a risk - Why?
•Few if any real innovations have come from
the traditional strategic planning process -
name one that came out of the process versus
from a high performing individual
•Our Regional Manager is the catalyst for
almost all meaningful innovations - retail
items, store hours, DD/T; 100 days of summer;
Outrageous Value Days; others -- we need
innovation at all levels!
Strategic Planning: This process has
to...

• engage everyone in the region/market to

plan and execute the plan
• create a critical mass
• Give people ‘meaningful’ goals that enlist
massive levels of motivation/commitment
as a system
 Strategic Planning
• Traditional Strategic Planning processes are not good
for creating innovation
• Does not engage the entire system in developing the
system plan
• Data is usually limited to the team itself rather than
from the entire system
• No real accountability for results from Regional Teams
• No Feedback mechanisms to assess progress - no way
to learn
 Strategic Planning
• We have to ‘super-charge’ this organization
for increased innovation and high
achievement.
• The super-charge needs to result in high
levels of motivation and commitment from
all regional staff, store employees, and
Owner Operators
 Strategic Planning - A Proposal
• Use the Appreciative Inquiry Process
– Used by many companies with great success
– Creates greater innovation - A Key!
– Creates considerably higher levels of motivation and
commitment
– Focuses and builds upon what is going right or has
gone right
– Identifies the times when the organization was at its
best
 Appreciative Inquiry
• Faster method to create new ‘bests’ for regional
performance
• New bests come from increasing the utilization
of members best strengths & competencies
• People want to build and create, not get mired
down in only focusing on what is wrong or
broke; individuals prefer to create greater ‘bests’
• Aim is to constantly replicate the organization’s
‘bests’
 Appreciative Inquiry
• Accelerates change due to ‘critical mass’ & by
engaging entire organization
• Produces greater motivation & commitment
• All members have broad access to information
from multiple levels of people in the
organization
• Total organizational mindset - individuals see
how their individual/team contributions fit