We live in a business world of new buzzwords, techniques, and slang. I have seen significant twists and new strategic terms used to describe where a company is headed and how they plan to get there. These unique approaches are fine – but there is a time and place where a leader needs to step [...]
Many of the executives that we talk with have little regard for Twitter. And that’s probably fine, it can be a big use of time. However, if they knew the power of getting to information at the speed of light, and information that is current, relevant, and popular, they might reconsider. Competitive intelligence professionals are [...]
I had the pleasure of seeing a presentation by Afterburner, a motivational business training company comprised of former Air Force pilots. The concept of Afterburner is that there is a “zero tolerance for error” in the world of military aviation – and the concepts that are applied in building an air force of individuals that [...]
We are summarizing 25 key slides that visually tell the whole strategy story for a company. Borrowing from some of the best we have seen in action, each is a key component to the planning process and should be valuable to management teams. The Strategy Destination slide. We can’t disclose the source on this one, [...]
Despite signs that the economy is improving, companies are still actually tightening their belts. Perhaps this is better said this way: productivity is still one of the most important metrics that companies seem attuned to. We participated in an activity that a client went through years ago – one that was painful to conduct but [...]
That was the punch line on a discussion I had this week with a good friend of mine, a Director in a Fortune 500 company who was discussing the “brain drain” that has happened across his organization. I’ve written a little about this and have talked with many of you about the risks that Corporate [...]
Having participated in a number of strategic planning efforts across several different sized organizations, and after working with some of the largest strategic planning firms, there seems to be one element that is critical to the ongoing success of a plan: A PMO. For some, the concept of a Project Management Office is remedial – [...]
I have a great friend, a Chief Marketing Officer at a Fortune 500 company who instituted a process for briefing senior executives. This process is a written document that he had used at Proctor and Gamble (now he knows that I’m talking about him). We affectionately call it the “P&G format”. How it works: The P&G format [...]
I took a lot of grief from some colleagues early-on because I fell in love with a particular A.T. Kearney chart. The chart is pretty simple – it methodically lays out the strategic options that a company has before it to profitably grow business. We have taken and modified the chart over time to use [...]
This may seem remedial. I’m sorry. But I have gotten voice mails from sales professionals and leaders in companies – and the way they leave these messages are the most unproductive I’ve seen in a long time. I think we take the practice for granted, yet we do it hundreds of times a month. [...]
