I.

Executive Summary

We live in a world where every part of it contains a mark of globalization. It has really a
big impact not only in the field of businesses but most especially to our own lives. It does not
only make as an informed citizen but also we learn about human involvement with environment
and society. Where everything is almost futuristic, it is necessary for everyone to keep up with
trend. It is a strategy for a company to be known and have an advantage towards the other
competitors. It is also a time step up their game and be with the other companies which are
rising. A company should be satisfied but never contented. Since it is important to continue the
acquisition of learning when it comes to people, same as to the organization. The organization
should discover, learn, and research continuously for the betterment of the company. As what the
saying goes, “there are lots of rooms for improvement”, so every day is a brand new day to
improve and learn new things.

In a business, it is not enough that you know how great your company is. It should be
known by other people for you to be successful, obviously. The qualities of your company
wouldn’t be seen if its standards do not meet the standard of the people. One’s company should
have a distinction and should see above or leveling with other great companies. Of course, the
vision, mission, and the goals of the company should be addressed and know right from the start.
It will be the guide of everyone towards success.
II. Statement of the Problem

This case study aims to determine the symptoms and roots causes of the following:
1. Having experienced consistency and rapid growth;
One of the main concerns of Research Square is to experience consistency and
rapid growth. Consistency and growth are big factors in a business. It is one of the
qualities that the market is looking for. These must be done accordingly if they want their
presence to be known in technology enabled services.

2. Varying balancing acts;

The Research Square had struggled with varying balancing acts; for profit vs. for
the benefit and offering solutions for researchers and publishers. It is necessary for the
company to balance those various acts for this might affect the outlook of people about it.
Application of methods and ways on how to balance those acts will surely solve the
problem.

3. In terms of short-term problem: defining the vision and goals to the company;
When it comes in defining the vision and goals to the organization, the Research
Square should come with a straightforward vision. In achieving the goals, the goals
should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. The goals should
still in line with vision. It is needed to be explained clearly and evenly so that everyone
will be in the same path.

4. In terms of long-term problem: building the Research Square’s name and presence in the
research company

Where everyone is striving to be known and successful in the field they chose, it
is important to have your own name to be distinguished in a countless number of
businesses. It requires patience, perseverance, and persistence before you get what you
deserve.
III. Causes of the Problem

This section states the causes of the problem of this case study:

 In a company like Research Square which strives to be known, it is really needed to

have a quality that is in the standards of the people. For a company to be supported by
the market, it should be very consistent in its work and can keep up with rapid growth
in the economy of the business. Consistency must be maintained while going with
rapid growth.
 When it comes with varying balancing acts, Research Square is struggling. Research
Square should know its priority while giving the benefits to management and its
associates. In terms of profit vs. benefit, Research Square should be making their
profit while giving benefits and they should identify their main concern before
making a step especially in terms of offering solutions for researchers vs. publishers.
Research Square should recognize which will be their priority.
 It is necessary for all of the company to have their vision and goals. It is not just
having it, but knowing and defining it must be done. The company wouldn’t know the
things to be achieved and their vision in that company that’s why it would turn out as
if they are not on the page. They will just walk without a path and destination.
 Building one’s name and presence in the business industry is not an easy task at all. It
would require that certain company to try all the possible ways and tactics that is
fitted to the company. It is not an overnight task that will be done by tomorrow
morning. It requires trials, challenges, and failures before getting the success they
deserve.
IV. Decision Criteria and Alternative Solution
After analyzing the evident causes of problems and the problems itself, the consultant
came up with possible alternative solutions:

 Gathering insights into Research Square’s market and positioning

Based on the given causes of problems, gathering insights with key personnel
across multiple departments and management levels about the Research Square’s market
and positioning could greatly help. They could provide their perceptions about the current
stand of the company, give suggestions about how the Research Square could attain its
vision and goals and the findings could assess the strengths and weaknesses of the
company through the gathered necessary knowledge. On the other hand, gathering
insights could not really have an impact towards the on-going planning session. The
associates might not give their honest opinion about it or they might not care about it at
all. This would just lead to waste of time if not implemented properly.

 Marketing Leadership Placement

The leaders in an organization should be the first one responsible in handling
situations like this. They should be equipped enough, have knowledge regarding the
company and capable of giving solutions out of this scenarios. In an organization,
associates have their own job assignments. Refining the job specification would benefit
not only the company but also the employees. There would be assigned new people for
the new positions in the company. The old employees might have the opportunity to be
promoted into a new position or the scope of their work and responsibilities might not be
increased. There would be new offices taking care of the specific job that would focus on
the marketing, advising on the hiring process, and providing feedback on candidates.
V. Recommended Solutions, Implementation, and Justification
After the thorough analyzation, the consultant concluded the following recommended
solutions:

 Implementing the key characteristics of high involvement management

Regarding this recommended solution, the present and future employees are
involved. This could be implemented before and during the stay or work of the
employees in the company. At the beginning of the hiring process, the management
should know the qualities, skills, and capabilities they are looking for in their possible
employee to work well. Their employees shouldn’t just be capable of working but also
have the ability to fit in the work environment and culture. After hiring the employees,
they should undergo in an extensive training wherein their abilities would be enhanced,
their knowledge would improve, and their skills wouldn’t just focus on their field. Lastly,
they would be able to acquire additional skills that would greatly aid the company.

 Positive Organizational Behavior Approach

The company should not stop in nurturing their employees. It is important to
continuously develop their skills and abilities for the sake of their own, as well as, for the
company. The company should help them in discovering their greatest strengths to be
used in their work and weaknesses that would turn into strengths as well. In this way, the
employees would be productive, efficient, and competent when it comes to their work.
Also, they would be able to experience less stress on their job and the quality of their
performance would really shine throughout the company.

 Applying Leadership Styles

As what everyone knows, leadership is about providing general directions and
influencing individual or groups to achieve goals. The company should know and
distinguish what leadership will be effective to attain the goals they wanted. Right from
the start of the hiring process, the management should identify the personalities and
behavior that would fit to the leadership style they would be using to meet their
objectives effectively. They should know which style would be applicable and
appropriate for the group. The leaders in a company should possess the important
leadership traits that the modern researchers have proposed such as the drive, leadership
motivation, integrity, self-confidence, cognitive ability, knowledge of the domain,
openness to new experience, extraversion. These traits would greatly affect how their
employees would act, and at the same time, how would they follow and respond to their
managers.

VI. External Sourcing

 After determining the problems and solutions about the case study in corporate
planning, the consultant used these support their investigation result:

 1. Process Owner

Management wants to implement a formal strategic plan but the challenge is to know
who should lead this activity. For a formal strategic plan process, some people advice that you
need to have a formal strategy office with a Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) leading the way. In
many cases this team can be part of or work directly with the finance department.  If it’s not
possible to create the department, then a virtual team is another option with key players from
multiple areas. Sometimes virtual teams are not easy to manage. Most probably the process
owner will need to hold the hands of each department to get up and running with their strategy.

2.  Change Management

This is a challenge not only for Strategic Planning but for most enterprise processes. For
many business areas within an organization, this might look like more work on their already-
busy agenda. The team (formal or virtual) designated to lead the process should work with all the
departments and help them on their first iteration. Probably at the beginning the team will do
most of the work while the departments provide feedback. Start small, thinking big: keep it as
simple as possible at the beginning and work incrementally. You can start with a limited number
of departments, limited number of KPIs and/or limited reports. Work on a Pilot, take lessons
learned and repeat. 

3. High Level Support

This challenge, especially when mixed with others, can be a real show stopper for
Strategic Planning. Time to make a good case: Strategic Planning has to play an important piece
for every organization. If you want to make a lot of emphasis in this, there are many case studies
that show how struggling organizations have been able to rise up through the use of good
Strategic Planning.

4. Starting Point

If you have some performance measures already defined, some people recommend just
getting a popular methodology like Balanced Scorecard and start aligning those to some of the
classic Perspectives. Mission and Vision are a given for every organization, so you can start from
there and start defining your priorities base on those. Then ask yourself what you would like to
achieve within each priorities and how you would know if you got there.

5. Technology
 Business Driven: Especially at the beginning there are going to be a considerable amount
of changes, and creating a ticket and waiting for it to get process is a wasting of time for both
business and IT. Having the process in place to load and validate or approve those values is
valuable. This is also a good way to start the project, following the “start small” topic from
above, you might want to try a couple of iterations with manual data and show the value to the
business before you start dealing with IT, permissions, ETL processes, etc. Showing results is
not everything, in fact that can be done with many tools, you should show what you are doing to
get where you want to go as a business.

Retrieved from: https://www.cipherbsc.com/challenges-strategic-planning/

 1. Start with the issues

Ask CEOs what they think strategic planning should involve and they will talk about
anticipating big challenges and spotting important trends. At many companies, however, this
noble purpose has taken a backseat to rigid, data-driven processes dominated by the production
of budgets and financial forecasts. If the calendar-based process is to play a more valuable role in
a company’s overall strategy efforts, it must complement budgeting with a focus on strategic
issues. In our experience, the first liberating change managers can make to improve the quality of
the planning process is to begin it by deliberately and thoughtfully identifying and discussing the
strategic issues that will have the greatest impact on future business performance.

2. Bring together the right people

Strategic conversations will have little impact if they involve only strategic planners from
both the business unit and the corporate levels. One of our core beliefs is that those who carry
out strategy should also develop it. The key strategy conversation should take place among
corporate decision makers, business unit leaders, and people with expertise essential to the
discussion. In addition to leading the corporate review, the CEO, aided by members of the
executive team, should as a rule lead the strategy review for business units as well.

3. Adapt planning cycles to the needs of each business

Managers are justifiably concerned about the resources and time required to implement
an issues-based strategic-planning approach. One easy—yet rarely adopted—solution is to free
business units from the need to conduct this rigorous process every single year. In all but the
most volatile, high-velocity industries, it is hard to imagine that a major strategic redirection will
be necessary every planning cycle. In fact, forcing businesses to undertake this exercise annually
is distracting and may even be detrimental. Managers need to focus on executing the last plan’s
major initiatives, many of which can take 18 to 36 months to implement fully.
 Some companies alternate the business units that undergo the complete strategic-planning
process (as opposed to abbreviated annual updates of the existing plan). One media company, for
example, requires individual business units to undertake strategic planning only every two or
three years. This cadence enables the corporate senior-management team and its strategy group
to devote more energy to the business units that are “at bat.” More important, it frees the
corporate-strategy group to work directly with the senior team on critical issues that affect the
entire company—issues such as developing an integrated digitization strategy and addressing
unforeseen changes in the fast-moving digital-media landscape.

4. Implement a strategic-performance-management system

In the end, many companies fail to execute the chosen strategy. More than a quarter of
our survey respondents said that their companies had plans but no execution path. Forty-five
percent reported that planning processes failed to track the execution of strategic initiatives. All
this suggests that putting in place a system to measure and monitor their progress can greatly
enhance the impact of the planning process.

Most companies believe that their existing control systems and performance-management
processes (including budgets and operating reviews) are the sole way to monitor progress on
strategy. As a result, managers attempt to translate the decisions made during the planning
process into budget targets or other financial goals. Although this practice is sensible and
necessary, it is not enough. We estimate that a significant portion of the strategic decisions we
recommend to companies can’t be tracked solely through financial targets. A company
undertaking a major strategic initiative to enhance its innovation and product-development
capabilities, for example, should measure a variety of input metrics, such as the quality of
available talent and the number of ideas and projects at each stage in development, in addition to
pure output metrics such as revenues from new-product sales. One information technology
company, for instance, carefully tracks the number and skill levels of people posted to important
strategic projects.

5. Integrate human-resources systems into the strategic plan

One way to create a more valuable strategic-planning process would be to tie the
evaluation and compensation of managers to the progress of new initiatives. Although the
development of strategy is ostensibly a long-term endeavor, companies traditionally emphasize
short-term, purely financial targets—such as annual revenue growth or improved margins—as
the sole metrics to gauge the performance of managers and employees. This approach is
gradually changing. Deferred-compensation models for boards, CEOs, and some senior
managers are now widely used. What’s more, several companies have added longer-term
performance targets to complement the short-term ones. A major pharmaceutical company, for
example, recently revamped its managerial-compensation structure to include a basket of short-
term financial and operating targets as well as longer-term, innovation-based growth targets.
 An advantage of this approach is that it motivates managers to flag any problems early in
the implementation of a strategic initiative (which determines the size of bonuses) so that the
company can solve them. Otherwise, managers all too often sweep the debris of a failing strategy
under the operating rug until the spring-cleaning ritual of next year’s annual planning process.

Retrieved from: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-

finance/our-insights/how-to-improve-strategic-planning

 1. Ensure the primacy of political dialogue.

2. Design a planning process that speaks to the national context.

3. Reduce tensions between state building and development objectives.

4. Ground development assistance in a partnership framework agreement or treaty.

5. Create a joint management board to monitor and adjust plans.

6. Carefully select and strengthen lead international organisations.

7. Consolidate the current plethora of planning instruments into two clearly defined and
linked processes.

8. Prioritize goals and delivery strategies.

Retrieved from: https://gsdrc.org/document-library/strategic-planning-recommendations-paper/