Strategic & Action Planning

You hear it all the time: A strategic plan is created and it sits on a shelf. For three decades, TeamTech has practiced and refined a process for helping organizations create plans that NEVER sit on a shelf. Instead, our process leads to plans that are easy to communicate, use, and move into action.

How do we do this? Simple:

We listen.
We engage at all levels.
We facilitate.
We ask questions.
We help put your plan into action.

Most Importantly, We Care

TeamTech is a mission-driven business with a singular focus: to help people think and take action together. When you talk to our clients, they will tell you that we care – deeply and profoundly – about helping each and every organization we work with.

We are driven to help people, teams, projects, and the organizations and businesses they operate within be more effective. In fact, the facilitative approach we demonstrate is so popular that clients often find they want us to teach it to others in their organization. Our “Everyone A Leader®: Lead Where You Are” curriculum was born out of such a request over 25 years ago.

Learn more about EAL.

Releasing Insights: Engaged Employees Plan and Act Together

Our facilitative process is designed to release insights from people at all levels of your organization, whether you have 30 employees or 3,000. That’s because we believe—and research backs us up—that a successful plan requires buy-in from staff to make it work. To get that buy-in we engage a cross-section of key employees in the planning process, from administrative offices to the front lines. Engaged employees are more likely to feel they have a stake in your plan’s success. Just as important, they’re more likely to think and take action together–and your plan is more likely to take off!

“TeamTech’s approach—to draw from all levels of the organization—has helped us to quickly establish our mission and vision, and to generate staff interest. There’s energy and enthusiasm behind the plan. And TeamTech doesn’t just stop once the plan is in place. They stick around to make sure you have the tools and support to put that plan into action.”

Jeff Zmuda
Secretary
Kansas Department of Corrections

“When you work with TeamTech, it's not just about creating a plan. It's about changing the organization, about changing thinking, about changing directions. TeamTech has helped us do that by engaging everyone from administrators to front line staff. As a result, we have widespread buy-in from our employees. Folks are very energized. They're very eager to participate in work teams. And I'm just amazed at how many people now have the key principles we've drafted hanging in their offices!”

Laura Howard
Secretary
Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services

Johnson County Mental Health Center engaged TeamTech for Strategic Planning in 2015. Today, the plan the organization developed is still in place and, more important, still used to guide its operations.

“Anything we report to the board, anything we do with regard to our annual report, it all follows the core strategic vision areas that TeamTech helped us create,” says Executive Director Tim DeWeese. “They're still in place. They all still fit to help our organization become a higher performing organization. The reason it has stuck with us for so long is simple: TeamTech helped us engage a cross-section of our staff—from frontline workers to administrators—to create the plan and to move it into action. Everyone took ownership then, and they continue to take ownership today.”

Tim DeWeese
Executive Director
Johnson County Mental Health Center (Kansas)

As the pandemic raged last year, the Kansas Department of Corrections asked TeamTech CEO Kathleen Harnish McKune to help create a new strategic plan, one that would address issues ranging from staff morale to recruitment and retention of employees.

“I’ve been here for 17 years and have been through two major strategic action plans that did not result in impactful culture change,” says HR Director Jan Clausing. “That isn’t happening with Kathleen and TeamTech. She understands that nothing will change if you don't have a plan that the employees helped develop. She does a lot of the legwork to make sure everyone has input. One employee told me, 'I am so blessed to have a seat at the table.' That's huge, and I believe that in the long run this plan will have a positive difference on our agency.”

Jan Clausing
Human Resources Director
Kansas Department of Corrections

Our Three-Phase Approach

TeamTech understands that your plan, and its implementation, must be tailored to meet your needs and to work with the culture of your organization. We will NEVER guide you to a cookie-cutter plan. Instead, we will take you through a 3-phase process that we use with all of our clients. It’s simple:

Phase I
Listening and Learning
We start the process by learning as much as we can about your organization. We ask where you have been and where you hope to go. We listen to your employees, stakeholders, key partners, and others. We share these insights with your organization and use them to inform the next phase.
Phase II
Strategic Thinking and Planning
This phase involves a series of facilitated Strategic Thinking Bursts™. Each “burst” focuses on a specific element of your planning: vision, reality, strategies, key implementation planning and intended impact.
Phase III
Implementation with Dynamic Action Planning
We customize an implementation structure and approach that helps move your plan into action. We teach dynamic action planning and, where appropriate, organize some or all of your participating employees into Strategic Implementation Teams (SITs). We also recognize that implementation is not always about starting things – it is about stopping some things and rethinking others that are already underway. Whatever your needs, we stay with you for as long as you want.

More about Dynamic Action Planning: Letting Your Plan Breathe
The dynamic action planning used in Phase III is a process that acknowledges a plan must be fluid in order to be effective. It must be allowed to breathe and respond to shifting realities while keeping your vision and core objectives in place. To achieve this, we help you create robust feedback loops to measure your intended impact. Your employees will learn this process while doing it—one of the most effective ways to learn.

How To Get Started

To begin your Strategic Action Planning with TeamTech, or for more information, contact Kathleen Harnish McKune at kathleen@teamtechinc.com or 913-706-8797.

About Our CEO

Kathleen Harnish McKune, MBA and former CFA, is a co-founder of TeamTech and its current CEO. Coming from the world of finance and quality management, Kathleen has worked with for-profit, non-profit, and local and state governments, including two Kansas governors and their cabinets. In 1991, she studied as an intern with one of the fathers of the quality management movement, Dr. W. Edwards Deming. First under Dr. Deming’s guidance, then in partnership with her TeamTech co-founders, Kathleen deepened her understanding of facilitation, reflection, data driven-decisions, systems thinking, and the value that insights from front-line workers can bring to organizations. Click here for more of Kathleen’s story.