Fear the Fire Drill
Think about how you’ve spent your time this week at work. How much of that time was consumed by fire drills? Since you’re not a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov and you’re not one of the dogs he was doing research on, it would be good to break the habit of dropping everything to attend to things that are artificially…
Does Your Team Make Good Decisions?
Great strategy is built on trade-offs and trade-offs are the product of decision making. Make better decisions and you have the opportunity to create more effective strategies. Strategic thinking and business acumen can help clarify the key trade-offs to make. In this video I’ll share 5 questions to assess your team’s decision making along with 7 steps to clarify decision…
Be Strategic Manifesto
Strategic: Possessing insight that leads to advantage. Think, plan, act. Most people do none of these. They simply react. Bouncing from one thing to the next with no rhyme or reason is for bumper cars at the carnival. Don’t be a carny…be strategic. Stop throwing the word “strategic” in front of other words just to make them sound more important….
Facilitating Strategic Conversations
A business is only as good as its conversations. Think about it for a moment: every step of progress your business takes, from establishing mission and vision, to creating a new product offerings, to servicing customers, all flows through conversations. When we think of ways to improve the business, how often does “have higher quality, more efficient conversations” factor in?…
3 Keys to a Successful Strategy Session
It’s ironic that business strategy is designed to clarify a group’s direction, but the meetings to discuss it can often be muddied, disjointed, and result in greater confusion. Research from the Rotman School of Management found that 67 percent of managers believe their organization is bad at developing strategy. Having facilitated hundreds of strategic thinking and strategic planning sessions with…
Beware the StrategyLight Zone!
Halloween approaches and I wanted to pay homage to the Twilight Zone TV show and its creator Rod Serling with this video entitled, “The StrategyLight Zone.” Research shows that 43% of managers are not able to articulate their strategy and only 19% say their groups have a distinct process for developing strategy. In this brief video, I share three keys…
Stop Reacting Tactically & Start Thinking Strategically
Are you a strategic partner or tactical order taker? Being a true strategic partner to your colleagues and customers requires leaders to make trade-offs, avoid fire drills and generate new insights. Saying yes to every request that comes through isn’t leadership; it’s tactical order taking. Doing the same things in the same ways as all the other companies in your…
What is Strategy?
Essence (noun): the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing. If there was ever one “thing” that needed to be returned to its “basic, real, and invariable nature,” that thing is strategy. Like a boat with no anchor flailing about in the open sea, strategy has become unmoored from its’ true meaning. It has become meaningless. Research with 400…
Lead at Your Level
How many managers in your organization are wasting their time and talent performing tasks that they should be delegating? Research shows a startling 41 percent of activities managers are working on are actually items that could and should be performed by the people that report to them. While it may feel good to roll up the sleeves and knock out…
Designing Your Strategic Road Map
“We’re on a road to nowhere, come on inside. Taking that ride to nowhere, we’ll take that ride.” Talking Heads If your team is working without a strategic road map for the business, you may feel like you’re living the lyrics to the Talking Heads’ song “Road to Nowhere” each and every day. What are the symptoms? A culture of fire…
