INTRODUCTION

To complete the 4R Assessment at the end of this page, let me give you some basic info.

First, it’s a proprietary framework we developed to help business owners, CEOs & Senior Leaders power up, level up their strategic planning execution.

It’s based on what I call the Four R Quadrants of a Leadership Ecosystem.

These four quadrants need to function cohesively and supportively to achieve optimal organizational Results. The Four R Assessment is essentially a resource inventory. Each of the four quadrants represents a “strategic planning leadership asset” that must be strategically allocated in order to achieve optimal results, strategic objectives & KPIs.

4 R Assessment allows you to do a qualitative and a preliminary Quantitative assessment of the tools & resources you have at your disposal. To get more quantitative assessment you will need to do some more Quantitative assessments which we cover in our 5-week training program, which you can sign up for below.

In our training on Organizational / Leadership Ecosystem we go into detail on how to create an Organizational Ecosystem Map but for the strategic planning process in this Position Gap Analysis phase we do a limited Ecosystem Map to help the organization identify key Resources, Resources, Roles & Rules they will need to strategically allocate in the strategic planning process.

This should be done by the initial strategic planning team but should also be expanded on by the Strategic Planning Subgroups.

This exercise is “value or vision specific” – we will explain this concept in our 5-week training program entitled: Leading with a Strategic Planning Framework for Business Owners & CEOs who want to enhance their Strategic Thinking, Planning & Leadership

A quick understanding of this value/ vision alignment for the 4 Rs is illustrated with the line of questions

• What are your Strategic Goals & Objectives?
• What Results are you working towards that would indicate progress towards the Strategic Goals & Objectives?
• What are the top 4 Relationships, Resources, Roles & Rules I have or must have to achieve Strategic Goals, Objectives & KPIs?

Let’s look at some basic info regarding each of the 4R’s

RELATIONSHIPS

• Identify the people who impact your ability to achieve strategic objectives & KPIs
• Look at people internally within your organization/dept. and also people externally, like your banker, major vendors etc
• Make this “personal” so instead of listing a relationship as “my banker”, actually list the person’s name – Sally Sue!
• When you do the ROLES section below, you will then use functional identifiers such as banker. Cross reference the ROLES lists against your RELATIONSHIPS list to make sure both lists are as complete as possible

RESOURCES

Major resources used by organizations are often described as follow: (1) human resources, (2) financial resources, (3) physical resources, and (4) information resources.

• Equipment/tools
• Data/Information
• Money (not always a resource but a result when resources are strategically & profitably allocated
• Human resources – a Relationship listed above maybe also be the Resource – say for example Harry is the CFO – so he is in your relationship box, but access to finances maybe a resource which goes through Harry

ROLES

• Start with your roles – be granular and not just list your macro role aka job title
• Look at roles as functions. EG – I depend on IT dept making sure the company’s networks have 0 down time.
• Again, this may have some redundancy with RELATIONSHIPS because the IT manager Susie maybe in your relationship quadrant and IT Resources maybe in your Resource quadrant.
• This type or redundancy is what you are looking for – what you do not want to see is what I call a 4 R disconnect. So, if Harry the CFO is in your relationship quadrant but financial resources are not in your Resource quadrant nor is the CFO role not in your roles quadrant, then that’s a major 4 r disconnect that can impede your achievement of Results

RULES –

• INTERNAL & External
• Internal Rules =
  • Policy & procedures
  • Written & Unwritten i.e., organizational culture –you’ve heard the cliché “we don’t do that around here”. These unwritten rules can have major impact on your strategic plan execution
• External Rules =
  • Govt, regulatory agencies