Achieve Competitive Advantage

Why invest in professional strategy facilitation?

  • "89% of senior executives are not very satisfied with their organization's strategy development process."1
  • "85% of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy, with 50% spending no time at all."2
  • "80% of top management's time is devoted to issues that account for less than 20% of a company's long-term value."3
  • "75% of business leaders cite the wrong strategy as their company's primary barrier to growth."4
  • "Companies with a clearly defined and well-articulated strategy outperformed those that don't have one by a 945% to 62% in Total Return to Shareholders over a 10-year period."5
Rich has facilitated the strategy development process for dozens of organizations resulting in:
  • Practical and effective strategic plans that actually drive daily activities
  • Revenue growth through strategic innovation
  • Identification and leveraging areas of competitive advantage
  • Moving from a "commodity" status to a truly differentiated positioning
  • Strategic alignment of activities between functional units and within the different levels of the organization

Why choose Rich Horwath to work with your management team on the strategy development process?

  • EXPERTISE—Author of several books and dozens of articles on strategy
  • EDUCATOR—Professor of strategy at the MBA-level
  • EXPERIENCE—Former Chief Strategy Officer
  • FOCUS—President of the Strategic Thinking Institute
  • INNOVATOR—Designed a proprietary strategy development process

The StrategySphere System
The StrategySphere System has helped dozens of organizations effectively and concisely think through the dynamic business landscape to develop successful strategic plans. The StrategySphere System's five phases and their individual components are represented in the following diagram:

The paradoxical beauty of the system is that it is both comprehensive and concise — allowing you to use as many or as few of the elements as necessary to develop a solid strategic plan.

"I appreciated your ability to teach/facilitate/moderate and move us through the strategy development process in a productive fashion. Your modular and highly tailored approach of the process to our business fits our needs nicely. Thank you for your preparation and hard work in navigating our team through the strategy development process. One year later, I can say that your work had a dramatically positive impact on our business. In addition to the strong strategic plan we developed, you infused a new mind set into our organization that has created the strategic discipline to make important trade-offs and has unleashed a powerful energy of confidence. You’ve truly made a difference to our business."

Don Pogorzelski
President
Genzyme Diagnostics

"Rich took our group through a variety of strategic exercises and templates that really flushed out a great deal of insights on our business, our customer base, our competition and the market environment. He then transformed this information into a very credible and most optimal strategic positioning for our business.

Throughout the process, Rich was a leader, listener, presenter, facilitator, team memberăin essence, he played whatever role was necessary to get the job done in a very tight timeframe. For the next strategy/marketing project I have that needs outside assistance, Rich will be the first person I call."

Rob Schneider
Group Market Manager
Baxter Healthcare Corporation

Benefits of a Strategy
Development Process
  1. Establishes direction
  2. Stimulates innovation
  3. Improves decision making
  4. Enables trans-silo communication
  5. Creates prepared minds
  6. Instills confident purpose
  7. Increases revenue, profitability and productivity

StrategyPrint
The StrategyPrint® is a powerful two-page blueprint that serves as a real-time strategic action plan for your business. The StrategyPrint solves the challenge of linking strategy development with strategy execution by providing a concise and thorough two-page document that is dramatically more functional than the traditional strategic plan. The StrategyPrint's concise two-page format makes it easy to update on a regular basis so that you have a plan that is always current.

Page one of the StrategyPrint captures the key insights for the business regarding the market, customers, competition and the organization. The majority of these insights are developed from the Discovery and Strategic Thinking phases of the process.

Page two of the StrategyPrint transforms the insights into the strategic action plan, including the overarching strategy, business drivers, goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. The result is a common planning framework that can be used throughout your group to ensure that everyone is following a unified strategic direction.

Strategy Facilitation
An independent business strategist can free an internal executive from the impossible task of both objectively moderating the strategy discussion and providing their own opinions on the strategy itself. The result is a professionally framed discussion that stays on point and leads to an effective strategic plan to guide and grow the business.

As a former Chief Strategy Officer and professor of strategy, Rich has both the strategy expertise and facilitation skill sets to successfully guide your management team's strategic planning efforts. He is experienced in working with global companies to develop business strategy and brings a blend of advanced academic training and years of hands-on, real-world application. Rich will tailor the appropriate strategic planning tools and frameworks to your group's needs and deliver an experience that will blend seamlessly into your organization's current processes.

CEO Symposium
A number of clients have asked Rich to facilitate strategy sessions with their CEO customers in an effort to better understand the strategic perspective of their key customers. This is an excellent forum for tapping into the deep insights of your most important customers and forging stronger relationships at the same time. By using an independent business strategist to facilitate the CEO Symposium, the client can focus entirely on capturing the insights of the CEO's while not appearing to be there in a sales capacity.

1. AMA Leadership Development Study
2. Leadership Development Profile studies by Torbert & Kegan
3. Kaplan & Norton, HBR, 10/05
4. Institute of Directors in London
5. H. Bruch, HBR, 2/02

Please contact Rich Horwath to discuss your needs. He can be reached at (847) 756-4707 or .

"The StrategyPrint strategic planning tool received high praise from our management team and provides a great opportunity for our group to unify, simplify and master the strategic planning process. The fact that all of our managers agreed that the StrategyPrint is a valuable addition is a credit to the tool's ability to effectively capture the key aspects of the business. Another important benefit of the system is its ability to align goals, objectives, strategies and tactics throughout multiple levels of the organization, ensuring that all our efforts are in synch with one another."

Dan Linden
National Director
Pfizer, Inc.

"Thank you for facilitating an outstanding strategic thinking session with our top CEO customers within our industry. The CEO's believe that the program provided them with tools that will allow them to be more effective strategists. In addition, we received a lot of praise about your knowledge in the field of strategic thinking and your ability to deliver the information at the right level. Thanks again for a great program."

Dean Gregory
Vice President, Strategy
Baxter Healthcare Corporation