Always on my mind, forever in my heart – Unknown.
I had a terrible week before I reported to work at Citibank.
I found out that convincing my clients that they didn’t need my services was harder than I thought. I attempted to remind them that they survived without me for four weeks when I was away for my trip to India. They said that was different.
As a result, I came up with the idea of setting everything up for them so that all they needed to do was enter data regularly to produce reports. I offered my services to train somebody to do data entry and produce reports. I also offered to come on weekends and spend a few minutes to make sure that everything was done correctly. I told them to call me during the day in case of emergency. Perhaps more importantly, in order to persuade them I told them that I would not charge them for any of those services.
I decided to take the Go-Train to go to work in downtown Toronto instead of driving.
When I got to work around 8:30 AM, Ron was waiting for me in his office with a cup of coffee. He said I decided to spend some time with you this morning before introducing you to the other folks you will be working with. He also said he would introduce me to his boss who was interested in chatting with me this morning.
He said his boss had no strategic planning background but when he briefed him about my background, he got curious and he just wanted to see me for a few minutes. He may have some superficial knowledge about strategic planning which he may use to question you.
I said no worries.
Ron shared with me the organization charts identifying the domain of the project I would be working with. He said, just relax and take your time to put together a work plan so that I can keep my boss briefed and happy. He said his boss’s just curious enough to keep asking the same questions again and again. So make sure that you don’t give a different answer to the same question.
I said thanks for sharing the peculiarities of your organization as I will be dealing with almost every senior person in the areas that you have pointed out, Ron.
He said the other thing that I wanted to mention to you is that I don’t necessarily like to keep track of what you do and who you interview. However, in order to justify your contract, you need to give my secretary the total number of hours that you worked at the end of each week. By the same token, I don’t mind chatting with you on Friday afternoons just to keep each other on the same page.
He said you have been around, had very high-level jobs in the banking environment, and I can only imagine that you are conversant with departmental politics. I will do my best to protect you as much as I can so that you don’t have to deal with that BS. The only request that I have is that if you run into any kind of trouble with the users, please just tell them to talk to me.
He said do you have any questions?
I said right now the only question I have is: where am I going to hang my hat?
He said I got your office all set not too far from mine, Mir. It was a cubicle office just across from his. It was good enough for me to do what I was contracted to do.
Ron said you have access to meeting rooms, and my secretary will help you with anything else you need.
Ron took me around to show me the coffee room. Then he introduced me to the folks I would be working with. He told them briefly about my banking experience and also told them that I would be leading the strategic plan initiative.
I suggested the five of us get together in the afternoon just to chitchat and learn about each other.
They thought that was an excellent idea and one of them said he’s going to book a meeting room for us.
Ron said let’s go see Chris, my boss.
I asked, is there anything you particularly want me to discuss with Chris?
He said the only thing that I was going to mention to you is that he will try to test your ability to listen to him carefully before you respond. He has a very basic knowledge about strategic planning but he will question you as he knows exactly what needs to be done. Furthermore, don’t hesitate to disagree with him, please.
As we got to Chris’s office, Ron said here he is. He said once you are finished with Chris; just go back to your office, Mir.
Chris got up and shook hands and said welcome on board, Mir.
He said I heard good things about you.
I said I hope I live up to the expectations, Chris.
He said don’t worry. We are here to help you get going.
He offered me a chair right across from his huge desk and asked me if I could use a cup of coffee. I said yes I can. He called Maya, his secretary, and said meet Mir. He will be working here with Ron. If he needs to see me, please find the earliest opportunity to fit him in.
She said I will do that, and I also will get coffee for both of you.
While waiting for Maya, Chris asked me where I lived?
I said I live in Scarborough and I took a Go-Train to get downtown.
He said he lived in Brampton and he also takes a Go-Train.
Once we got our coffee and the door was closed, Chris asked me if I could briefly talk about my experience, specifically in the banking area.
I gave him a very high-level briefing to cover my four years with ATB in Calgary.
He asked me a couple of questions about my work in the States and then he changed the subject of the meeting to strategic planning.
He asked me how I would define strategic planning.
I remember saying that it is a deliberate, intended, and conscious set of aspirations, ambitions or targets for an organization. The only stipulation to this process, in my book, is that every target included in the plan has to be realistic and credible.
Chris said I agree with you wholeheartedly. Before we proceed can I ask you a question?
I said shoot.
He said did you do any teaching in your career? I find it so easy to listen to you and understand what your message is.
I said I am flattered but the answer is “No”. The only time I ever did any teaching I was training modelling techniques to the user community in Fredericton as part of the project that I was working for.
He said let’s continue.
Chris said how can we make sure that the aspirations included in the plan are realistic, Mir?
I said you need to keep in mind that each and every aspiration included in the plan has to be supported by goals/objectives. Each goal and objective can be tested with the following:
- The Purpose;
- The Time frame;
- The Specificity; and
- The Scope.
So you are saying that the time frame to accomplish goals and objectives for each aspiration has to be tested against those four parameters.
I said you got it my friend.
He said can we go back and summarize the definition of strategic planning, Mir.
I said sounds like an excellent idea. In a simplistic way and at least in an ideal world, strategic planning is a long-term strategy that the organization’s top management or senior leadership team develop and implement. The major roles of this group are setting goals for the company, developing strategies that will help achieve those goals, evaluating progress made towards achieving them, etc. Strategic planning is a process which includes:
- Future Planning;
- Analysis;
- Goals/Objectives Setting.
Chris asked if I had any plans for lunch. I said, no.
What kind of food do you like, Mir. I said I can eat almost anything with the exception of pork. He said you don’t have to tell me that as I had Muslim friends in Rome where I was working before I got transferred to Canada.
He called Maya and asked her to make a reservation somewhere where they serve nice steaks.
He said please don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to justify but I am curious to learn. So tell me why should we do strategic planning?
I said it’s a thought-provoking question. Even an enormously successful company like Citibank needs to plan strategically to expand and improve productivity. In order to keep the shareholders content, the focus must be on continued growth and success.
He said Mir while what you said is true, I want to know at my level why should I care about strategic planning. I said let me say this in a simplistic way:
- It requires you to plan ahead, identify what resources you would need, and execute the appropriate strategies to achieve your desired outcomes.
Furthermore, it empowers you to better allocate your resources and money towards projects that will give you the highest payoff which will:
- Reduce the risks associated with making mistakes;
- Help the organization design a complete blueprint for their future;
- Provide more control over the progress of different parts of the organization;
- Lower stress levels because there’s no guessing about what needs to happen; and
- Help the organization to stay competitive, and provide guidance when making decisions.
He said WOW! How do you remember all these things, Mir?
I said I was working on it for a while.
Chris said, Mir, you have given me enough this morning to pretend that I know something about strategic planning.
I said there’s no rush but I would like to have an opportunity to talk to you about “Operational Planning”. The reason is that strategic planning itself is no good if you don’t prepare an operational action plan for each aspect of the strategic plan. They need to be supported with more specific goals/objectives for getting things done on time and within budget.
Chris said I look forward to that session and for now let’s go and have lunch and chat about our families and holiday plans.
I started to feel blessed just knowing that my first day at Citibank was turning out to be more gratifying than I had anticipated which was really important.
The first week at Citibank was busy and productive. Ron was thrilled to pieces that I managed to keep Chris captivated all morning and to have lunch with him. He wanted to know how I did that. I told him that we talked about the process for developing a strategic plan most of the time. He asked if I had made any appointments with Chris to continue my conversation on the subject? I said there’s no need to keep talking about the things we talked about. However, I did mention to Chris that it’s worthwhile to spend some time talking about operational planning. He told Maya that whenever Mir wants to see me, he gets priority.
I said it’s critical to understand that you need to do operational planning as soon as you have a strategic plan in place. Each goal/objective included in the strategic plan must be supported by operational planning in order to accomplish the desired results on time and within budget.
Ron said he would like to spend some time with me to understand the whole concept of operational planning when I am ready.
I asked would you like to be included when I meet with Chris.
He said that it may not be the best idea because it appears to me that you have developed a rapport with Chris. You will be better off dealing with him on a one-to-one basis; otherwise he will not feel comfortable enough to ask any questions in my presence. I said that makes sense.
I had access to Ron almost any time and I considered it a dream opportunity for me to convince him that there’s a need for creating a project plan including the typical five phases – Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closure as:
- It was essential to the success of the project. Otherwise it may be susceptible to common project management issues such as missed deadlines, scope creep, and cost overrun; and
- While spending time to write a project plan is labour intensive up front, the effort would pay dividends throughout the project life cycle.
Once I briefed Ron, he supported the idea of a project plan. I also thought I needed to sell this idea to the four who were supposed to be working with me. We were supposed to be a team.
When I discussed the matter with them they didn’t have any problem but they had a different understanding about what needed to be included in the project plan. I wasn’t totally impressed with their concepts of a project plan. I believed that some of those ideas could be counterproductive. Hence I thought the best way to handle the situation was to put together a plan based on what I believed to be the right way, and then discuss it with Ron. I assumed that if Ron accepted it they would also be in agreement, but I was not too sure about that.
I spent a couple of weeks just focusing on drafting the project plan. Once I was fairly comfortable with the draft, I had a meeting with Ron and suggested he review it and give me his feedback before we circulated the draft to other folks.
While Ron was going through the draft, I focussed on writing a communication plan, and developed the Project Schedule, Budget Document, and Project Guidelines.
Once Ron was happy with the draft and before I distributed it to some important people in the organization for their feedback, I decided to make a brief presentation to those folks who happened to be managing the banking operations so that they could have a basic knowledge about strategic planning.
I explained to them that strategic planning is a process for achieving your goals. It requires you to plan ahead, identify what resources are needed, and execute the appropriate strategies to achieve your desired outcomes.
The presentation was focused on the following basic information:
- Strategic plans are typically general in nature, while operational plans are more detailed;
- Strategic plans are long-range goals for your company or organization, while operational plans take into account short-term goals to help you achieve these over a specific time frame;
- Strategic planning focuses on long-term goals and the overall direction of an organization, while operational planning deals with day-to-day activities and resource allocation;
- Strategic planning involves the top management, whereas operational planning involves all levels of an organization; and
- While strategic planning looks at the long term and explains your broad strategies for growth, an operational plan looks at the short term and explains the details of what your business is going to do and when it’s going to do it over the next twelve months or so.
I said the idea of strategic and operational planning may seem like an easy distinction to make, but it is not always so clear. Let me repeat it – Strategic plans are typically general in nature, while operational plans are more detailed and focused.
At the end of the presentation, Chris said now he understood the process better. He agreed that the next thing we needed to do was operational planning.
Ron was happy that his boss had no problems with my approach.
At the same time Adam was busy with his school and was working part time on the phone to sell newspaper subscriptions to make some money. He consistently exceeded sales expectations and was rewarded by being taken downtown to a wrestling match along with other kids.
Lynda was quite happy with her job and they were giving her more responsibilities. Somehow she managed to convince her boss that she would prefer not to work on the weekends as I was doing a full time consulting contract and liked to have her home on the weekends.
She was also actively participating in activities with her sorority sisters.
The only thing we were not doing was having mother over more frequently. It didn’t make any sense to invite her to come and stay with us when Lynda was working days full time. However, we went to see her as frequently as possible and sometimes we used to get her to come and stay with us on the weekends.
I was spending a few hours on the weekends going around checking that my old clients were keeping up with the way I wanted them to work. It turned out that everything was working fine and they were happy.
Unfortunately, I had not been able to spend time on my assignments. I had drafted a plan about writing my thesis and submitted it to my advisor. He was delighted to support it but I didn’t get around doing anything else as for the last several weeks I was busy with Citibank. I figured as soon as I got things sorted out with Citibank, I would get back to my studies.
On top of everything else, I had joined a health club in downtown Toronto, close to where I was working. My daily routine was to leave home right after 5:00 in the morning to catch a Go-Train. Then I would spend time in the gym, sauna, and swimming pool from 6:30 AM to 8:00 AM before I went to the office. I used to get home late almost every night and then would spend time preparing for the next day before I went to bed. I was making good money and I wanted to make sure that I was doing everything to justify it.
Lynda understood and supported me.
