Developing strategies

Triptiks® and Strategic Planning

January 12, 2011

I recently was asked to review a draft of a “Strategic Plan” document for a non-profit organization. A committee of about 15 people have been working on this for several months. In a nutshell, the “plan” included the following elements: situation analysis, key findings and recommendations. In other words, not a complete strategic plan. There [...]

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Great article about how the recession made a small company stronger

October 18, 2010

A highly recommended article from the Feb 11 NY Times, entitled, “How the Recession Made Us Stronger.” The author recounts the experience his small company endured before, during and after October 2008 when the bottom fell out. He used what he called the “4 P’s” – people, positive cash flow, profits and positioning. And he [...]

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WSJ article about redefining strategic planning

May 15, 2010

There was an article a couple of weeks ago in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “Strategic Plans Lose Favor – slump showed bosses value of flexibility, quick decisions.” A quote that stuck out for me was, “Walt Shill, head of the North American management consulting practice for Accenture Ltd., is even more blunt: ‘Strategy, as [...]

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How do your customers view your value proposition?

April 2, 2010

When was the last time you talked to your customers about something other than selling them your products or services? If you’re like most CEO’s, the answer is probably something like, “Too long ago.” In this business environment, staying close to customers is absolutely critical. And, an important part of those conversations should be about [...]

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Great book on strategic PR

January 25, 2010

Jennifer Gehrt and Colleen Moffitt, who are the founding partners of Communique PR in Seattle, have written an excellent book called “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness The Power of PR.” They wrote this book based on a conviction that most of the “how to” books on PR are very tactically oriented. Their approach [...]

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When you put it like that it seems so easy!

January 18, 2010

Article on Ford Motor Company and CEO Alan Mulally yesterday in the newspaper. Mulally is doing a phenomenal job of bringing Ford back from the brink. For me the operative quote in the article was: “Mulally is relentless. He’s got a laser-sharp focus on a simple vision that he just drills into the organization.” There [...]

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The “Plan on the shelf” merry-go-round

January 7, 2010

So I’m working with a client earlier this week on long range planning, and a visitor joined us for lunch and wanted to know what we were up to. The CEO explained and the guy said, “Right, so you’ll do the planning, put it in a binder on the shelf, and that’ll be the end [...]

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Strategexecution???

May 20, 2012

I have been trying to come up with a term that captures one of the guiding principles of Upswing: The ultimate goal is results, therefore, strategic planning and execution are parts of a single integrated activity. Strategexecution is obviously a crappy name. But the idea behind it is not. In far too many cases, companies [...]

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