Business Halftime: Adjustment #3
Halftime Adjustment #3: Decisions Once a football coach has assessed the current context, evaluated the success and impact of behaviors, they must then make decisions for the second half. Do I stay with the starting quarterback or switch to the backup? Should we change the defensive scheme to put more bodies on the line and force them to throw the…
Business Halftime: Adjustment #2
Halftime Adjustment #2: Behaviors The second factor a football coach will consider at halftime is the behaviors of their team and the opponent. Was the running game or passing game more effective? How has the opponent’s special teams impacted the game? Are the offensive and defensive lines blocking effectively or are they the proverbial sieve? As any competent job interviewer…
Business Halftime: What’s Your Score?
“There was a signature to a Bill Belichick team: Whatever the opposition did in the first half, his team tended to take away in the second half.” David Halberstam on the three-time Super Bowl Champion Head Coach of the New England Patriots football team Good coaches in any sport come into a game with a solid plan to win. Great…
Strat Plan
I recently had the honor of working with five-time Grammy Award winning hip hop artist Stra-Da-Gee. I consulted on the lyrics for his new song “Strat Plan” which describes the follies of strategic planning. Take a listen to the rap below and see how many of the strategic planning traps your organization has fallen into in the past. Strat Plan…
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Strategic Thinking Traps 8 and 9
8. Status Quo Popular adages such as “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” “Don’t rock the boat,” and “Let sleeping dogs lie” all feed into the natural tendency to prefer the status quo. Time and again, research has proven that when individuals have the option of doing something new or staying with the status quo, they overwhelmingly stay with…
Strategic Thinking Traps 5-7
5. Forecasting The mere act of attempting to estimate or calculate something in advance should give you pause: amateurs—in some cases monkeys—routinely out-perform experts in meteorology and the stock market. There are several traps to be aware of when forecasting in business. One is over-confidence. As human beings, we’re prone to overestimating our talents, which you could argue is also…
Strategic Thinking Traps: Anchor’s Away!
2. Anchors In making decisions, the mind tends to give initial information or impressions a disproportionate amount of weight. This tendency is referred to as an “anchor.” The anchor jades the strategic thinking process because it starts the process at an artificially high or low point. Most commonly, anchors take the form of last year’s strategic plan or this year’s financial…
