SEEKING A NEW STRATEGIC VISION

AgriFusion facilitated a strategic planning session for the MPO board of directors and management team on 9 November and unpacked expectations, strategic factors, the organisational story, value drivers, key performance indicators, priorities, responsibilities, and next steps.

“You are perfectly aligned with the results you get.” – Arthur Jones

Expectations of addressing the needs and challenges of producers, creating a sustainable financial environment for producers, staying relevant as a producer organisation within organised agriculture, and pro-actively acquiring industry intelligence that supports price negotiations and unites the value chain were spelled out from the onset.

To craft a stellar strategy, you need to be clear on your starting and end point, and while the strategic process unfolds, study the limitations, lessons learnt, actions, and review points to ensure the window of opportunity is not missed.

“It is one of the paradoxes of success that the things and ways that got you there are seldom those things that keep you there.” – Charles Handy

The MPO of the future would like all the milk producers in South Africa to become members of the organisation and to engage the next generation of dairy farmers, addressing their core needs, enabling them to achieve zero-carbon status and create an environment conducive to compliance to codes of good practice, all in an effort to double the per capita consumption of milk through traceability and differentiation.

The availability of information, decision-making speed, globalisation, and regenerative drive makes strategic planning a different ball game altogether. When analysing the competitive landscape, market competition can be seated in new competitors, globalisation of suppliers, consumerism, and substitution, to name a few. Growth can sprout from a generic strategy such as differentiation, or from an alternative direction such as consolidation or product development, or even from alternative methods such as acquisitions or alliances.

In telling the MPO’s strategic story, the organisation needs to translate their mission, vision, and policy into strategy maps that show what to focus on to manage performance; in other words, implement rigorous focus on value drivers and translate value drivers into driver-based plans and related budgets that distil key performance indicators at several levels in the organisation and focus business reporting on delivering the objectives of the strategy.

Coordinating committees have been established, comprising an MPO employee and two MPO directors, each with the following portfolios: auditing and finance; human resources; training; economics; and membership. A strategic road map and focus areas will be shared with members in the near future.

“A strategy is about making choices, trade-off’s, it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” – Michael Porter

Fanie Ferreira

Acting chief executive of the MPO

fanief@mpo.co.za