When Michael Araten arrived
at K’NEX Brands LP in
2006, he was tasked with outlining a vision for growth.
It sounds like your typical
process, but as president and
chief operating officer, Araten had
to find a way to blend the culture
and growth of the toy business
with that of the company’s manufacturing arm, The Rodon Group.
The two companies — one centered on sales, one on manufacturing — had never really outlined
a joint vision before.
So to create a strategic plan
that could move both companies
forward while maintaining their
separate agendas, Araten sought
input from many of his 200
employees and from outside
agencies. The keys to creating a
successful plan were to carefully
craft objectives and then monitor
them to ensure that they really
worked, Araten says.
“It’s about identifying what it is
you need to grow and figuring out
a plan of how to get it, then getting it,” he says.
Smart Business spoke with
Araten about how to create and
implement a successful strategic plan.
Listen before you act. The key
first is to ask a lot of questions about what’s working,
what’s not working and what
everybody’s opinion is on why
that is.
A key part of any CEO’s job
is assessing the talent of the
people they’ve got and then
assess the information you’re
getting and people’s opinions.
Then you weigh the options
based on what you think has
the most credibility, so at
least you have a sense of
where you are.
Then you have to look at the
marketplace that you’re playing in and decide what can
you do to take more market
share? I happen to come from
a school of thought that either
you grow or you die. You look
at that second.
Then what we did was identified our core competencies.
We defined a core competency
as something we have that
either we don’t want anyone
else to have or it wouldn’t take
a whole lot of time and money
and investment for someone
else to copy. After you identify
your core competencies and
say, based on your core competencies and the marketplace, what are the avenues
open for growth, then the X
factor is who you bring into
the room for that process.
I know some people say
once you get more than six
people in a room, things start
to break down. But I happen
to believe a little bit more
heads are better than one. You
need all of your disciplines
because if you don’t have that,
someone’s not doing the
checks and balances of keeping yourself honest in what
you’re trying to accomplish.
We got involved people from
every major discipline. Then we encouraged them, and they
did share our findings with
their groups on a departmental
level. Then they came back
and said, ‘We shared this at
our team meetings last week,
and we got some other things
where they thought, yep, we
agree with a lot of this, but
here are some things we think
you can focus on more or we
think you missed.’ Ultimately,
we probably got about 80 percent of the company involved
in some way.
Ask yourself the right questions. The big three for me are: Do
we believe what we’re doing is
going to maximize our
chances at success, and why?
Do we have the resources,
whether it’s time, people, capital, to go pursue what we think are the best options?
And three, do the people have
the skill levels to do what you
need them to do?
And if not, how are you
going to either train them or
supplement them with other
talent?
