Getting strategy right is hard work. Most management teams struggle and many play with the tools of strategy, but never finish anything. Teams that get it right share some common traits, including...
One of the happy outcomes of my leadership and management writing is the opportunity to speak and work with great groups of professionals in live settings. This post outlines the Top 10 Outcomes of one of my live events. I would love to work with you and your team!
Helping a group align on the hard work of strategy is...hard work. Here are 3 ideas in my latest video update to help you get people working together early in the strategy process:
Every professional involved with sales, managing sales or managing sales professionals will enjoy this fun interview with David A. Brock, author of: Sales Manager Survival Guide--Lessons from Sales' Front Lines. Dave's new book and his ample advice in this podcast offer priceless guidance for success in one of the most challenging roles in our workplace.
The ability to rewire our thinking about change may be a fundamental survival skill in a period of time where accelerating change is a given. Change must be interpreted as challenge, and building a culture that embraces the pursuit of a steady stream of new challenges must be the mandate of leaders. I think the video game designers have already cracked this code.
The Business Review meeting is a staple of large and small organizations everywhere. These can either be constructive opportunities to reflect on challenges and opportunities and identify needed actions, or, they can be destructive time-wasters. Sadly, in many organizations, these meetings resemble the latter. Here are six ways the group from corporate contributes to the destruction of what should be an important meeting:
“Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy.” Richard Rumelt—Good Strategy/Bad Strategy Consider: “Our strategy is to be more profitable than our competitors.” “Our strategy is to grow from 10,000 to 100,000 customers in the next three years.” “Our strategy is to be the leading provider [...]
Most businesses and most management teams flail and fail when it comes to the work of strategy. In today's world, where the long-cycle strategy process has been replaced by short-bursts of experimentation and iteration, it's essential to reduce the fail and flail by attacking the root causes of so much dysfunction with this work. Here are 7-Steps to to help the senior team get it right:
One of the worst uses of the term, “team,” is in relationship to the group of executives who report to the CEO. For many of the (less than $200 million in annual revenue) firms I work with, there’s little beyond the “report to” issue that binds these groups together as a team. This is often frustrating to CEOs who expect more from their highest paid lieutenants. Here are 3 areas where these groups can and must coalesce as a team:
Strategy processes mostly disappoint. That’s too bad, because there are few things more essential to an organization’s success and security than getting strategy right. Here are (at least) 17 ways your strategy process will break bad:
