For the December issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine, I had the privilege of writing an article entitled “Triple-A Thinking,” which provided an overview of the three disciplines of strategic thinking: Acumen, Allocation and Action. I use the word “discipline” as it relates to strategic thinking because as Michael Porter of Harvard Business School once wrote, “Strategic thinking rarely occurs spontaneously.” In fact, it rarely occurs at all…. READ MORE

If strategy were a physical summit in your company, business unit or functional area, would you be the only one standing at the top? For many leaders, the depressing answer is ‘yes.’ While you may have built a mountain of expertise shaped by strategic insights, the great leaders are the ones who help the rest of their team scale those heights from tactical to strategic thinkers. The process of helping managers develop their strategic thinking… READ MORE

Friday is almost in the rear-view mirror. How much time did you spend talking about strategic issues this week? Research published in the Harvard Business Review showed that 85% of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy, with 50% spending no time at all. Contrast that with Amazon.com. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos (recently rated the 7th best performing CEO in the world in a study by INSEAD) said that his… READ MORE