NAVUG Weekly Wrap-Up (Jan. 8th 2016)

Delaney Freer

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NAVUG Weekly Wrap-up Jan. 8th 2016

We had a great start to the new year! We were joined by Meghan Parisi from Advanced Business Systems, who presented a session as part of the NAVigating Year-end One Source Series titled NAVigating Year-end: Manage your 1099s and keep the IRS happy. Meghan delivered a great presentation that included a system walk through and lots of great tips for handling the 1099 year-end business processes.
If you were not able to participate in the webinar and this is part of your business duties or you would like to share the session with your co-workers, you can find the session PowerPoint and recording located on our content library. This shared media is available to NAVUG members only.
Content Library Location: https://www.navug.com/viewdocument/?DocumentKey=3b06cbcb-a541-42e2-962b-beea578e711e.

Strategic Planning for the New Year

This week at NAVUG HQ, we gathered in Fargo, ND for our Annual New Year Kick-off and 2016 Strategic Planning meeting. This gathering had a Year in Review for 2015, which included a lot of feedback analysis from our Summit surveys and other user/partner recommendations we have received from user group committees and others along the way. This review was about determining opportunities for growth, as well as celebrating the NAV User Group successes!

We had some pretty amazing things happen in 2015 and would like to thank all of our members for their continued support, volunteerism, and involvement in creating a for users by users Dynamics NAV community, that connects great ideas and great people to inspire achievement within member organizations.

With that, I would like to share with you some ways you can help ensure your 2016 is a successful one. Whether you are working with a team on department planning or working alone to create a plan for organization and personal and professional improvements this year, the following tips can be used to help ensure your success:

3 Steps for Great Organization and Planning

1. Set your 2016 calendar
Create your version of a “Tickler File”. The tickler file concept began in the days of storing notes and paperwork in good old manila folders, before document scanning and e-folders were available. 12 monthly folders and 31 daily folders were created to store and organize all of the notes and reminders you will need for the coming year. (Wax)

The idea is that all your reminders and notes for a month will be moved forward to the next year’s folders, so the information is readily available when the next years’ time comes around. With Outlook and other electronic calendars now available, we will talk about a good method for utilizing them.

First, go through and set all your meeting and event reminders for the year. Then, after you work through a month, take the time to reflect on what events, notes, or reminders you want to carry over to the same time next year. Tip: Set those reminders and events on the future dates you would like the reminder, not when the project is due.

Along with the reminders on your calendar, notebook tools such as OneNote or EverNote can help you store the information you are wanting to reference and creating a monthly folder system in Outlook can be done as well.

Using the concept of the Tickler File, helps to alleviate the pain of wondering “What did we do about this last year?” Having reminders set and notes readily available, will no doubt help you NAVigate your entire year more effortlessly. Having your calendar planned out as much as you can, gives you a roadmap to follow and helps to keep you on track to reach your yearly goals.

Read More on the Tickler File Here.

2. Strategic Planning Through Idealized Design

Idealized Design and interactive planning is a concept imagined by Russell L. Ackoff, a Professor in Management Education and a founder of operations research and systems thinking. The premise is to begin with the end in mind and work backward to develop the plan to achieve the end results.

Begin the process with as much creativity and dreaming as your inner child can produce. Start by asking, “If we could do anything, what would a perfectly designed end to this year look like?” Then, you work to identify the Gaps between where you are and where you want to be and further develop the plan to get there. Figure 1 below outlines the stages in the Idealized Design process.

To learn more about what has been described as a “best way to drive fundamental, transformative change within your organization” (Ackoff, Magidson and Addison), click here for details on Amazon.

Major Stage	Sub-stage	Description
Idealization	Formulating the Mess	This process identifies the major challenges facing an organization and the major needs the organization must address: “Every organization or institution is faced with a set of interacting threats and opportunities. These form what we call a mess…This process identifies an organization’s Achilles’ heel-=-the seeds of its self-destruction—and provides a focus for the planning that follows by identifying what the organization or institution must avoid at all costs” (p. 5).
Idealization	Ends Planning	“This stage is at the heart of idealized design. It involves determining what planners would like the organization or institution to be now if it could be whatever they wanted. It then identifies the gaps between this idealized design and the organization as it is, thus revealing the gaps to be filled by the rest of the planning process” (p. 7).
Realization	Means Planning	“This phase requires planners to determine what should be done to approximate the ideal as closely as possible to avoid the self-destruction projected in the formulation of the mess. Planners must invent and select courses of action, practices, projects, programs, and policies to be implemented” (p. 7).
	Resource planning	“Implementing idealized design requires planners to identify and marshal the resources needed to accomplish the planned changes…” (p. 7).
	Design of implementation	“Determine who is to do what, when, and where. Create a schedule and allocate resources to the tasks to be carried out” (p. 8).
	Design of controls	“Determine (1) how to monitor these assignments and schedules, (2) how to adjust for failures to meet or exceed schedules, and (3) how to monitor planning decisions to determine whether they are producing expected results (and if not, determine what is responsible for the errors and correct them)” (p. 8).

Figure 1: The Stages of Idealized Design (Gabriel)(Ackoff, Magidson and Addison)

3. Create To-Do Lists to Follow and Stay On Track

Every evening or first task in the morning should be to update your To-Do list and prioritize and plan your day. Having an outline of the day’s tasks helps ensure you continue to be productive and are moving towards meeting your goals. Knowing what needs to be completed each day also helps to make sure duties are completed in a timely matter, as it is easier to work through your list than trying to remember all day what needs to be done.

The hardest part is getting started. Once you have a good plan and a good system for organization down, you will soon find it is much easier to work ahead than it is to feel like you’re working with your head just above water. I encourage you to make 2016 the year of planning and organization and celebrate all of your accomplishments at the end!