Organizations are gradually adapting to increasingly effective strategic planning and strategy execution methods that allow them flexibility to quickly adjust tactics in today’s more challenging and fast-changing business environment. Gone are the days when strategic plans where meant to be static guides for a 3-5 year period. Simply put, strategic planning is about maximizing our opportunities to be successful, and that changes some of the requirements for strategy implementation in our current business climate. One factor is that strategic threats are emerging more quickly and in increased numbers. Now, more than any time in history, there is a need for more frequent “attention” to be paid to both strategy and execution. This three-part article series provides some valuable guidance to business leaders for more agilely managing strategy and execution in a business climate filled with hidden strategic threats.
Strategy and Execution: Most Companies Don’t See Strategic Threats Coming Until It Is Too Late - Part 1 of 3
↧
↧
Strategy and Execution: Most Companies Don’t See Strategic Threats Coming Until It Is Too Late - Part 2 of 3
In Part-1 of this article series, we discussed the trend of organizations gradually adapting to increasingly effectivestrategic planning and strategy execution methods that allow them flexibility to quickly adjust tactics in today’s more challenging and fast-changing business environment. Gone are the days when strategic plans where meant to be static guides for a 3-5 year period. One factor behind this change:strategic threats that are emerging more quickly and in increased numbers. Business leaders are recognizing that there is now a need for more frequent “attention” to be paid to both strategy and execution than at any time in our history.
This segment of the article series delves into specific types of threats that organizations need to be able to detect and account for in their strategies.
↧
Strategy and Execution: Most Companies Don’t See Strategic Threats Coming Until It Is Too Late – Part 3
Strategic threats are emerging more quickly and in increased numbers than at any time in our history. There is a reason for that. We operate business in an interconnected global economy and marketplace that is always on, continuously changing and is hyper-competitive. As such, the strategic planning discipline is now being called upon to be the lookout watchtower that business organizations must rely upon to surveil environmental conditions, then proactively work to mitigate damage to organizational assets before it can occur. This requirement is forcing organizations to shift to increasingly effective and strategy execution methods. This article, the final segment of the series, discusses: threats, risks and vulnerabilities. Lastly, the article provides a framework for strategic threat management that can and should be incorporated into the planning discipline of any organization.
↧
Threading The Needle: Sewing Corporate Strategy Together With Operations
During countless conversations we have with executives, they discuss the biggest strategic planning challenge they face within their environments - that of strategy execution. Aligning corporate strategy to operational execution is indeed critical, yet most organizations fail to continue the planning effort beyond the corporate planning process - into the operational layers of the organization. By doing a good job in this area, organizations can establish the necessary links from strategic goals to the business-level execution of strategy-supporting initiatives. Those links and the governance to manage overall progress at a plan-level constitute the “golden thread” required to sew corporate strategy together with operations so that strategies can be implemented successfully. Because operational planning all to often is not done well, or is overlooked altogether - this article describes ways to inject operational planning into the strategic planning process and string the “golden thread” through all of the execution loop-holes.
↧
Corporate Strategy and Sales Operations: Starting the Machine
Across the planet and down to the very last business on earth, all of them share the common challenge of making sales occur in a repeatable and predictable manner. Whether executives work in a start-up business or a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, generating sales increases and determining how to fill the sales pipeline are concerns always near the top of the list for corporate leaders. The sales challenge is the great equalizer among all competitors and is the common strategic bond across businesses in all industries. This article on corporate strategy explores pushing the “on” button for revenue generation by unlocking the full potential of the sales organization.
↧
↧
Implementing Your Strategic Plan: Merging Strategy and Execution
We publish numerous articles on corporate strategy and execution that are based on decades of consulting experience and research in hopes that business leaders can learn from what other organizations are doing well and poorly. The extent to which businesses are positioned to execute on strategies once plans are developed is directly linked to the process followed and the management disciplines applied to governing strategy implementation. The following articles where selected as recommended reading for business executives interested in improving upon corporate strategy execution. Each of these articles explore critical facets of strategic plan implementation - identifying common root causes of failure and offering solid and actionable steps to overcome challenges in execution.
We hope that you will find value in reading each of these article choices.
↧
Strategy Formulation: A Leader’s Role In Setting The Corporate Agenda
Corporate strategy provides the vision and direction organizations need in order to fulfill their missions. Strategic plans must then layout the corporate agenda for accomplishing that strategy. Determining organizational goals and setting the priorities of the corporate agenda can seem daunting and, quite frankly, can be where trouble often begins for many businesses. This article offers business leaders help.
↧
What Were They Thinking? Avoiding Corporate Strategy Disasters
Corporate strategies will never be perfect or foolproof, but there is no reason why strategy train wrecks like the one that occurred at JCPenney need ever happen. Strategies can be dramatically improved through strategic planning process changes - including the “testing” of hunches and assumptions ahead of committing to them and gambling reputations, jobs and the very life of the business. Half-baked strategic decision making based on wishful thinking, overly ambitious ideas or incorrect assumptions can lead to disaster. Just ask Ron Johnson.
↧
Culture & Business Performance: What’s the relationship?
Why is it that culture seems to be linked to the good, the bad and the ugly in today’s business world? Perhaps the answer can be found in the mounting data suggesting that organizations with strong cultures rooted in shared core values tend to have much happier employees... and happier employees help businesses be more productive. In fact, there is newly released empirical evidence from the Strategy Institute For Thought Leadership that suggests that core values (read: culture) directly correlate with business financial performance. Like it or not, culture is indeed an integral ingredient to an improved bottom line. As such, business leaders cannot afford to look the other way and dismiss culture as some sort of “soft” or “fuzzy” element that does not have an impact on the Profit & Loss statement.
This article looks at culture from some perspectives you might not have thought about, then explores criteria to help identify business culture opportunities and how changes can be introduced to help improve performance.
↧
↧
Strategizing Your Way Out Of A Threatened Business Model
Why is it that successful companies find themselves needing to reinvent their business models over and over in order to survive? Sometimes technological shifts drive companies downward in the competitive food chain or render all businesses in a particular industry to the status of outdated relics. In other cases, consumer preferences change or commerce regulations are rewritten. The sad fact for all organizations is that change happens and eventually a company’s business model can outlive the value it once offered the marketplace. When it occurs, the business must proactively change as well and do so with thoughtful strategy. Failing to do so consequently be doomed to join the ranks of failed companies that were once dominant players in their industries. This article explores the art of strategizing your way out of a threatened business model with three important actions executives should start taking now.
↧
Spilling the Secrets of Strategic Planning: Round 1
The strategic planning process should successfully define corporate strategy, align operational planning tactics and set the framework in place to manage execution of plan goals. Sounds simple enough, right? If only it could be that easy. As an organization that works with businesses across industries, it is quite apparent the task of developing business strategy and the plans to implement it continue to pose a challenge to most companies. While a lot goes into defining strategy, formulating supporting goals and aligning tactical initiatives - it is still not rocket science. Strategic planning and implementation can and should be accomplished with meaningful results if enough process and discipline are applied.
This article series addresses the strategic planning challenge, breaking the process into three critical phases. In this segment, the following topics are explored:
- Common things that go wrong in the process
- Why planning and execution goes more smoothly in some companies
- The first of the three critical phases of strategic planning and what is involved
↧
Saving The Business World From Bad Strategic Planning
... Spilling The Secrets: Round 2
There are magnificent strategy success stories that can serve as valuable models to those astute enough to learn from the approaches taken by organizations with notable performance superiority. There are many more stories of failed attempts to transform flagging businesses in time to save the organization from impending doom. As the rest of the business world repeats variations of past bad behaviors and struggles to unlock their full organizational potential, an elite group of thriving companies have managed to tap into the elegant simplicity of setting a vision and following through on its implementation. It is the ability to balance strategy, planning and execution that gives advantage to today’s most successful companies. When it comes to strategic planning - two key elements stand out as the common denominator in the success stories. Simplification and focus are critical in driving success in the successful execution of corporate visions.
↧
Integrating Strategy | A Six-step Process For Strategic Planning and Execution
Integrating Strategy: "No Nonsense" Advice From Method Frameworks
Business success hinges on the extent to which organizations are positioned to form a strategic vision, set the correct priorities and goals, then execute on strategies once strategic plans are developed.
Virtually any business measure of success is directly linked to the planning process followed and the management disciplines applied to governing strategy implementation. Integrating strategy into the daily routine is not only possible, it is critical.
Follow the six-step strategic planning process outlined in this article for improved results.
↧
↧
Aligning The Mechanisms Of Strategy: Eight Checkpoints
Corporate strategy and crisp execution are top of mind with business leaders. Businesses operate on models designed for value creation that are in alignment with their competencies, capabilities and stated value propositions for each class of product and service they offer. While the value proposition helps communicate the marketing and sales message, the business model must deliver the value promised by correlating strategy with market expectations. Crisp execution requires business strategies to be aligned with methodically planned actions. This article addresses eight key areas where alignment to corporate strategy are essential to business effectiveness.
↧
Growth Looks Good On Paper, Just Know The Strategic Implications
While many businesses are content to see slow organic growth occur in their organization, others are pushed and prodded by impatient investors or parent companies to achieve aggressive year-over-year growth targets...or else. When results from growth strategies do materialize, business leaders should celebrate the moment, reflect on the concentrated efforts their management team spent to accomplish the goal, then go back to work. At the first signs of success, it is not the time to abandon the methodology that led to the results...the hard work, the focus the organization maintained in the lean times and the painful lessons learned and applied along the way. The sweet taste of success in a company’s expansion strategy can tempt the business to become more brash in seeking out faster avenues for the next stage of growth - even before the foundational concrete of the current wave has fully set. This article takes a hard look at the cost of growth so that business leaders can develop growth strategies with their eyes opened to the risks and understand the costs that accompany expansion.
↧
Why Strategic Planning Is Hot: 4 Resulting Enterprise Building Blocks
Success Is Planned
Strategic planning helps bring clarity to an otherwise cloudy business vision. The very process of strategic planning helps identify market trends and customer preferences, then attenuates strategy to operational programs that address those trends and preferences accordingly. It establishes the correct architecture for fiscally responsible growth, and - second only to superb execution - is the single most important determinant to organizational success. Success largely depends on an entity’s ability to build internal capacity and capability as a result of having planned for it to occur. But truth be told, the most critical bi-products of strategic planning happen to be four foundational building blocks required of any successful enterprise: Vision, Strategic Priorities, Structure & Accountability and Culture. These organizational assets are essential to sustain long-term performance improvement and profitable growth.
↧
Are Assumptions Placing Your Strategic Plan At Risk?
Managing Assumptions, Risks and Impediments In Strategic Planning
How sound are your organization's underlying business assumptions your strategy and strategic plan are based upon?
While no one likes the idea of having one foot on the brake while doing strategic planning, there are very good reasons to take the time required to be cautious. We are speaking to the undeniable link between the business assumptions we make and the risks we introduce to the organization during strategic planning. In fact, the assumptions we base strategies upon can mushroom into grave risks and show-stopper impediments down the line - appearing out of nowhere when the business attempts to execute to a seemingly well-laid plan. Twelve to eighteen months into strategy implementation is too late to go back and ask, “What were we assuming...?” Given that time will always be of the essence, what kind of strategic assumption vetting and risk identification is warranted? How much is enough?
↧
↧
More Pages to Explore .....
