Have you ever wondered how you can take your team’s strategic planning to the next level?

The Birkman Method is a time-tested, scientifically reliable way you can play to your team’s strengths, making planning and strategy development more efficient and more enjoyable for the whole team. Essentially, the Birkman Method is a personality and perception assessment which can help individuals, leaders, and teams understand their work-related strengths, motivational interests, professional orientation, and deeply-rooted perspectives to enable them to find work that is fulfilling and brings success.

The Birkman Method outlines what’s referred to as your “organizational focus”, which is one’s fundamental approach to any work situation. Broken up into four categories known as occupational groups, each group is assigned a color. The four occupational groups provide a quick summary about the kinds of work activities that will have the greatest and the least appeal to you. This is demonstrated clearly in a graph, making it easy to interpret.

Most people will have some degree of all the colors, meaning everyone has some capability in each category. However, you will likely see one or two groups are longer than the others. If your Birkman Method report shows that your longest color bar is blue, for example, this means that your strongest natural job aptitude is related to design, strategy, and creative planning. People who have a mostly blue organizational focus are future-oriented, innovative thinkers and work well when they can use their creativity to make long-term plans and solve problems. These will likely be the kinds of employees that will excel at strategic planning.

Diversity is a strength; a team made up of a variety of different types of employees is a successful team.

When choosing people to put on a strategic planning working group, be sure to select blue employees, but don’t forget to look at what strengths other employees can bring to the table. For example, red employees are oriented towards operations, technology, and practicality which, depending on your project, can provide invaluable insight. They are more short-term thinkers, but that doesn’t mean that their input isn’t important. Some employees may also have a mix of blue and green strengths, for example; green being focused on sales, marketing, and communication. These employees will likely excel at strategy development for promotional projects or long-term communications planning.

When you know your team members’ organizational focus, you can then help to make sure that they are a part of projects that will best serve them, and therefore the company. By allowing yourself and your employees to follow their natural professional orientations, you will notice a powerful and profound impact on not only your success as a team and as individuals, but also the overall physical and emotional well-being of everyone involved.

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