The Asia-Pacific management team met last week in Melbourne for the annual strategy review meeting. AP is currently on a 5 year strategy plan (2004-2009) and the team meets each year to review the 2009 goals and the annual steps required to get there.

The first day - Wednesday - was a half day meeting with the agenda being to review the 2009 goals and amend them where required.

Thursday was our regular quarterly management meeting that was also attended by Bob, Don and Andy on teleconference. This ran a half day.

The final day - Friday - the meeting ran most of the day and focused specifically on setting 2006/2007 goals that are aligned with getting to 2009. We used a new format this year for the goal setting - due to the Balanced Scorecard management system now in place throughout ASI. A trial run of the AP scorecard was used as the basis for discussions to keep green-light items green, and turning red-light items into green-lights. The outcome of these workshop discussions will be turned into formal Balanced Scorecard initiatives and published into the AP Scorecard online reporting system.

I now have some work to do in compiling the 2 days of strategy workshop notes and putting forward a draft paper that formalises the general agreements made during the meetings. The final strategy amendments and 2006/07 BSC initiatives will be presented formally to the AP team at the staff retreat later in August and to customers in September.