Strategic Planning

Woolpert's Leadership Team recently completed an intense strategic planning effort culminated in what I believe to be the most promising Strategic Plan we have developed in our nearly 100-year history. The reason I believe this Strategic Plan to be so good has as much to do with simplicity and timing as with the details of the plan themselves. As I began preparing for our Strategic Planning meetings, I was concerned that the pressures of the economy might prevent the Leadership Team from being in the right frame of mind to create a great Strategic Plan. As we embarked on our strategic planning process, it became abundantly clear that my concerns were unfounded. Not only was our Leadership Team in the right frame of mind to prepare a great Strategic Plan, they needed it! The Leadership Team needed a break from the day-to-day pressures of the economy and needed an opportunity to get re-energized and focused on the future. They couldn't have been in a better frame of mind to address what Woolpert wants to be within the next 3 to 5 years and how we're going to get there.

We started our strategic planning process by looking back at our 100-year history. This afforded us the opportunity to reflect on and appreciate our history and also create a baseline from which to build our new Strategic Plan. We then went through an exercise to access each business unit's strengths and opportunities for improvement. Our strategic planning process then became a simple one. It focused on a limited number of important goals (developed by the Leadership Team) that we felt were important for Woolpert to achieve within the next 3 to 5 years. We then went about building strategies to achieve those goals. In all, our plan is simple, requires great teamwork and provides the guidelines for Woolpert to truly become a high-performance firm. I couldn't be more pleased with our Leadership Team and our new Strategic Plan.

As I look back on our strategic planning process, I see a lot of correlation to a book that I recently read entitled Breakthrough Companies. The author, Keith McFarland, states that "traditional strategic planning is dead" and that "the purpose of creating a strategic plan is not to create a detailed plan of where the company is headed in 5 to 10 years. In today's fast moving environment, it is impossible to predict that far into the future." Mr. McFarland goes on to state that "the purpose of strategy is to help members of an organization learn to triage issues, to sort out what is truly essential to the firm's success." He then states that "strategy is nothing more than a collection of ideas about how the company intends to win." I couldn't agree with him more.

For those considering revisiting their Strategic Plan or creating their first, now is the perfect time to begin.

Woolpert Legacy, Culture and Core Values

On Friday, May 1, longtime Woolpert managing partner Chuck Abramovitz passed away in Dayton, Ohio, at the age of 85. With Chuck's passing, the Woolpert family lost one of its most influential leaders in our nearly 100-year history. Chuck was hired by Ralph Woolpert in the 1950s and went on to become the managing partner of Woolpert from 1977 up until his retirement in 1990. By all accounts, Chuck had as much influence on Woolpert's culture, core values, and success as anyone in our history.

The culture and core values that Chuck instilled still exists within Woolpert today. They are:

Culture
- Entrepreneurial
- Visionary
- Client and employee focused
- Honest and open
- Civic minded

Core Values
- Integrity
- Fairness
- Honesty

Under Chuck's leadership, Woolpert went from a regional to a national firm, grew from 300 employees to more than 600, expanded our services beyond traditional engineering and surveying, and became an industry-leading firm. Today Woolpert is a full service architectural, engineering, planning, and geospatial firm with nearly 800 professionals located in 24 offices across the country. Mr. Abramovitz, as we prepare to celebrate our 100 years in business, your inspiration, influence and legacy all live on.

Preparing for the future

As I write this blog, I find the natural temptation is to write about the economy or stimulus program. Either topic would certainly be pertinent to the engineering, architectural and geospatial industries of which Woolpert is part. However, as we all know, we can't pick up a newspaper, turn on the television or refer to any other news media without hearing about the economy, stimulus program, etc. I think we're all a little numb from this so I thought I would take this opportunity to put a different slant on the challenging times in which we all find ourselves.

Now is a great time for every business to conduct strategic planning, look for ways to improve business practices and processes, streamline operations, look at reorganizing, train and develop key staff, etc. In essence, it is a great time to prepare and position your business for the future when the economy does recover (and it will). That is our focus at Woolpert and I have no doubt that we are becoming an even stronger firm because of it. We have implemented several new business practices which I know will pay big dividends in the future. We are undertaking a new strategic planning process within the next couple of months that will allow us to get closer to our vision: To Be the Best! Our mantra right now is simple: Keep our firm strong and build it for the future.

I have no doubt that Woolpert will emerge from the economic downturn a much stronger firm. Not only do I believe this but perhaps more importantly, our employees believe it also. I also believe every other business has this same opportunity despite the immediate challenges they might face. Virtually every great achievement has been born out of necessity or crisis. That holds true today.

Strategies during an economic downturn

Despite the enormous economic challenges we face today, there are still opportunities for businesses to grow. In fact, some businesses will prosper through these difficult times. Woolpert has developed several key strategic initiatives that we believe will help us to grow our business in both good and bad economies. We are pursuing these strategic initiatives at the same time the economy has caused a shrinking demand for some of our more established services. While the demand for some of our more established services has certainly affected our business, these strategic initiatives have in turn offered some opportunities to hire new talent to address the demand for emerging services. We affectionately refer to this approach as our "entrepreneurial spirit," which is something we are very proud of.
 
Our approach has been relatively simple and focused on the following:
 
1. Be nimble enough to be able to shift resources quickly.
2. Don't be afraid to take on some risk in pursuing new opportunities. 
3. Have a proven pool of leaders that we can call upon to lead new strategic initiatives.
4. Be patient. Any new initiative will take time to elicit results.
5. Understand that some of the initiatives will fail. That's okay provided we gave it our best effort.
 
It will be interesting to look back at this difficult economic period and see which businesses flourished. There will undoubtedly be several.