In early January, 2002, CSSP interviewed Win Irwin, CEO of Irwin Seating Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Irwin Seating is a leading supplier of theater, auditorium, arena, home theater and indoor bleacher seating in the USA and, recently, in a number of markets around the world. The company has acquired companies or has established joint ventures in Spain, Brazil, Malaysia, China and Canada. Win’s company is in the process of utilizing the Simplified Strategic Planning process in most of these new ventures. Irwin Seating has used the Simplified Strategic Planning process for a number of years, and Win has some strong thoughts about the effectiveness of the program and its ability to help his company formulate effective plans and to carry them out properly. CSSP: As you have used the Simplified Strategic Planning process for a number of years, what are the principal benefits your company has realized from the process over all this time? Win Irwin: The Simplified Strategic Planning process is a comprehensive review that gets at all the significant issues we face as a company. It is systematic and it has good, easy-to-use sections on markets and competition. CSSP: How have you found the actual outcomes of your planning and the execution of the action plans to be when compared with your original plans? Win Irwin: Overall, the results have been very good, but we have used it on and off for years. Our other planning process (holding company/corporate) works very well also, but the CSSP process is excellent for our small, medium sized businesses. We have experienced a high rate of completion of each year’s objectives. It is a very effective process for us. CSSP: How does the planning process lend itself to practical results at Irwin Seating? Win Irwin: We align each individual's personal objectives to the company-wide objectives and hold all accountable for completing their objectives. CSSP: How well does your team follow through on the action plans developed through the Simplified Strategic Planning process, and how well are you able to keep to the planned schedule for most action plans? Win Irwin: We do quite well with our follow through on action plans. Over the annual plan time period, we get most of the plans completed. Obviously, some action plans get delayed as circumstances change, but we accomplish a lot with the plans we do complete. CSSP: How effective is your implementation of the action plans? Does your team spend more time planning or doing? Win Irwin: If we have a weakness, it is that we are not too great on action plan detail. We don’t tend to spell out the individual steps as well as we should, but the objectives, for the most part, do get done. We definitely prefer doing the plans, not planning. CSSP: How well have you integrated people outside of your strategic planning team into the process of developing goals and objectives? Do they feel they are a part of the strategic planning process, or do they think that planning is done "on high" and they merely have to carry out the plans? Win Irwin: Our PDP process (Personal Development Process, which includes personal objectives, responsibilities, development goals, etc.) integrates the planning with personal objectives for all the salaried people and all are aligned with each other and the company objectives. We have separate input sessions for many of our managers, but we could do more to engage/involve people in some areas. CSSP: If you could change one thing about the planning process, what would it be? Why?
Win Irwin: The entire Simplified Strategic Planning Process is excellent, but it doesn't work for organizations that don't, won't, or can't do an appropriate amount of the homework which is necessary to make the process work effectively. CSSP: If you could change one thing about the monitoring and feedback process, what would it be, and why? Win Irwin: I am not sure we utilize your process as you have designed it. We review our annual results and score them. We have done this for years. We also have regular quarterly reviews on where we are with each of the objectives. This works for us. For companies just starting out in the process, following the rigor of the monitoring and feedback process will allow them to have more comfort in knowing where they are and what needs to be done to stay on target. For more, click here © Copyright 2007 Center for Simplified Strategic Planning Return to Course and Direction home page | Return to archive page |
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