Ingeniera

THE FOUR FUNNEL APPROACH
I originally encountered the makings of the four-funnel strategic planning approach in business schools at RH Smith at the University of Maryland, where Dr. Brad Wheeler(now at Indiana) described a four-funnel approach to problem-solving. In his approach, he drew four funnels on a white board and labeled them, "Identify Problems", "Prioritize Problems", "IdentifySolutions" and "Select Solutions". The diagram looked something like this:
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As you can see, the four funnels represent the increase and decrease of information as you complete each step in theproblem-solving process. First, identifying problems gives you a list of possible problems; prioritizing those problems reduces the list to only those problems that are most important; identifying solutionsgives you a range of solutions for each problem; while selecting solutions again reduces your list to only the best solutions for the most critical problems. In short, there's really nothing radicalabout four-funnel problem-solving, but it's simple and it works.
Fast-forward to our strategic management course, where we were expected to use business cases to develop strategic plans in a matterof hours. Certainly, we learned the strategic planning process in depth during the class, but our challenge was to deliver a good plan in a very short period of time, particularly for casecompetitions. In response, my team and I applied the four-funnel approach, this time to strategic planning:
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Since then, I've used four-funnel with my own small business more than a half-dozen times, whilecoaching other small businesses through the process. It only takes a half-day or so to do, so it's not too much time and effort, considering the big payoff.
Four-Funnel Strategic Planning StepsReady to start? Here's each step:
1. Identify strategic needs. Using SWOT analysis (FODA) or a similar technique, write down the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats relevant to your...