Strategic Proficiency
Step 2 - From Busyness to Business
Copyright © 2001-2002 Thomas J. Buckholtz

Introduction

Strategic Proficiency is a pioneering methodology developed by Dr. Thomas J. Buckholtz to help enterprises and people thrive in challenging business environments. People use Strategic Proficiency techniques to pinpoint, communicate, and fulfill each other's business needs. Throughout your business activities, you can use the techniques - Service Value, Agenda Action, Style Maturity, Persona, Principles, and Clarity - independently or together to significantly increase the success of your customers, enterprise, colleagues, and career.

Use Strategic Proficiency Step 2 techniques to spark essential continuous improvement or large-scale innovation. Each technique provides a vital new or underutilized approach to one of the following questions: Who? What? Why? When? How? and How Much? For example, the Service Value technique addresses "What?" and provides actionable insight about how services, creativity, knowledge, work, and technologies - as well as products - add business value.

Use Step 2 techniques to augment, extend, and integrate your current, or "Step 1," business proficiency.

Illustrative Benefits and Endorsements

A Fortune 50 telecommunications company director estimated $2 million in annual potential revenue gains by using Strategic Proficiency techniques within her group of fewer than 12 people.

"I recommend [Strategic Proficiency] for any business executive who understands the value of effective communication and decision making. We are a startup with precious little time to succeed. Having a simple structure to work with has proven invaluable. I recommend taking the time to discover this valuable tool for yourself." - Mike Grove, CEO, Open Country

"I recommend the 'Service Value' and 'Style Maturity' techniques, developed by Tom Buckholtz, for anyone engaged in the transformation of government or industry. I have used the Value Spectrum in shifting from a paper-based publication to Web publication and knowledge management strategy." - Wayne Hanson, Senior Executive Editor, Center for Digital Government, e.Republic, Inc.

"The Service Value and Style Maturity techniques provide as important a conceptual breakthrough for enhancing business success as have Relativity and Quantum Mechanics for keeping physics viable. Fortunately, unlike Relativity or Quantum Theory, almost any person, group, or enterprise can benefit quickly and significantly from Value and Maturity." - Ron Fredericks, President, MultimediaComputing.com

From Busyness to Business

• What? Step 1 approaches to "what needs to be done?" are rooted in assembling tangible products. Use Step 2's Service Value technique to include services, skills, innovation, information, and other intangibles. Consider the comprehensive "value network:" Outcomes require Proficiency, which builds from Insight, which rests on Information, which builds from Transactions, which are facilitated by Infrastructure. After you decide what truly needs to be done, feel free to develop a thorough project plan.
• When? Step 1 approaches are time-centric. Use Step 2's Agenda Action technique to focus on "when" from the viewpoints of your constituents. For any opportunity, catalyze your customers', colleagues', and your own moving from Awareness, to Assessment, to Activation, to Achievement.
• Who? Step 1 approaches focus on namable entities - individuals, organizations, and teams. For your Step 2 success, include a function-centric approach. Achieve results by satisfying the needs of your customers', colleagues', and own Persona.
• How? Step 1 thinking treats "how?" as the details of "what?" Use Step 2's Style Maturity to determine how you want to accomplish Outcomes, how you do so today, and how to select and implement appropriate change strategies and techniques.
• Why? Step 1 behavior generates missions, visions, and values - often seemingly independent messages for various groups. Step 2 behavior generates Principles. Develop and use principles to produce universally applicable missions, visions, and values and to make, implement, and amplify decisions.
• How Much? Step 1 behavior dives headlong into "tax consequences," "internal rates of return," and the like. Use Step 2's Clarity to make common-sense, easy-to-communicate, easy-to-use estimates. Then, decide the extent to which to use Step 1 behavior.

Exemplary Applications

Use Step 2 techniques to achieve any or all of the following.

• Marketplace Proficiency - Create customer-resonant products and services. Market and sell proficiently. Outmaneuver the competition. Anticipate and shape Information-Age trends. Select and buy effectively.
• Enterprise Proficiency - Set appropriate goals. Communicate persuasively. Simplify organization. Innovate continually and significantly.
• Work Proficiency - Streamline projects. Focus on the most important work. Optimize work styles and improvement techniques. Enhance information systems. Proliferate successes.
• Team Proficiency - Form capable groups. Enhance leadership. Strengthen communications. Conduct effective meetings. Energize staff functions. Revitalize succession planning.
• Career Proficiency - Prepare for next assignments. Plan for the long term. Optimize learning. Increase leadership skills. Market successes.
• Quantification Proficiency - Pinpoint and estimate key factors.

Seminars and Enterprise-wide Programs

Learn the techniques in a day. Deploy them immediately. Use them for a lifetime.

People and groups can, during a one-day Strategic Proficiency seminar, gain proficiency throughout the six techniques, plan to improve their business effectiveness, estimate quantitative benefits, and prepare to use their new proficiency and plans immediately. The following exemplify seminar titles. One or more themes can be emphasized in enterprise-wide programs.

• Strategize Effectively - Pinpoint, Convey, and Achieve Your Value Proposition
• Create Successful Products and Services - Meet Customer Needs
• Catalyze Sales - Help Your Customers Buy Your Products and Services
• Enhance Decision Making - Decide, Announce, Implement, and Amplify
• Improve Work Results Dramatically - And Free Your Time
• Innovate Continuously - Add Practical Inventiveness to Your Routine
• Automate Prudently - Avoid the 70%-Non-Success Syndrome
• Communicate Clearly - Enhance Effectiveness and Efficiency
• Hire and Train Prudently - Meet Current and Future Challenges
• Lead the Way - Catalyze and Serve, as well as Manage
• Energize Staff Functions - Enroll Them in the Corporate Mainstream
• Position Yourself for Your Next Job - Take Charge of Your Future
• Thrive in the Information Age - Create, Sell, and Acquire Value

Registration and Other Information

Per Person Fees:
USF Alumni, spouses and USF sponsored participants- $295
Unsponsored Professionals - $495

How To Register: Click here or contact Ms. Angela Cerniglio at (415) 422-2511 or by e-mail at cerniglio@usfca.edu

Questions about the program should be directed to Tom Buckholtz at 650-854-7552 or by e-mail beyondinsight@aol.com

For information on lodging and other other events in San Francisco visit Meetings411 on the Web.