Grow your payoff by investing more in the highest leverage leadership activity.
What is the highest leverage leadership activity? Since we began consulting on strategic planning in 1989, we’ve been strong advocates of advance preparation for planning sessions. When client teams short-change advance preparation, it takes longer to create plans. Perhaps worse, the resulting plans tend to focus on short term and operational issues. In short, lack of preparation means your plans aren’t likely to have the desired positive impact on your organization’s future. We can’t think of a better way to increase your organization’s effectiveness than by making great...
Read MoreIs Creative Thinking An Oxymoron in Your Strategic Planning?
Why strategic thinking stops during strategic planning In his book, “The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning”, Henry Mintzberg noted that strategic thinking occurs more or less continuously in most organizations. Paradoxically, it seems to stop only during strategic planning sessions! After leading strategic planning sessions for 22 years, I agree. During strategic planning sessions ideas are presented, socialized, debated and polished . . . but seldom actually created. The vast majority of the new ideas presented in planning sessions were conceived before the planning session – often long...
Read More20 Tips for Successful Strategy Implementation: Part IV – Evaluation and Adjustment
Phase IV Evaluation and Adjustment Ongoing strategic success requires vigilant management—continually tweaking the strategy, implementing changes quickly and effectively, and keeping the strategy fresh and alive. A fast, flawless implementation may yield better results than a “brilliant” strategy poorly implemented. Following are five tips to help you manage the execution and evolution of your strategy effectively. 16. Focus on progress against milestones . . . and on results As implementation proceeds, it becomes both possible and vital to see whether planned actions are producing results....
Read MoreStill using SWOT lists? Maybe your planning process is a weakness.
Are you still kicking off strategic planning with a SWOT analysis? If you are, maybe you should list “outdated and potentially dangerous strategic planning process” as your first weakness! Here’s why. The Weaknesses on your SWOT list may be worse than just a waste of time – they may actually increase your risk of failure! The only weaknesses that matter are deficiencies in the critical success factors required for your new strategy. But you won’t know what they are until you’ve drafted the new strategy and identified the critical success factors required for that specific strategy. Even...
Read MorePart 2 – When Creating Strategy, Speed Kills
In the first post of this series, I wrote about how trying to plan too hastily kills the quality of a new strategy. In this post, I’ll write about how short-changing implementation planning risks squandering the advantages that come from speedy execution. Let’s assume you did everything right by investing enough time to create a good, sound strategic plan. At the conclusion of your planning session you’ve got a strategy that will build your relationships with the right customers and solidify your competitive position. Of course, this will not happen unless you can execute! Now the question...
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