Archive for 'Strategic Planning & Execution'

Think Strategy… Think Risky Assumptions

Do you remember the negative definition of assumption? You know the
definition invoked, usually after some sort of disaster, in which if you are
holding the bag your superior says, “How could this have happened?” and you
say something like you assumed. and then they say, “Assume stands for making
an ass out of you and me.” Now do you remember?

Well, you’ll be a long way forward in this turbulent world if you consider
strategy to be hopelessly riddled with ...

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26
JAN

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: assume, assumptions, hedge, McKinsey, portolio, risk, risk management, strategy, zippers

Reviving Your Strategic Plan

Posted by: Rodney Brim

I was talking with a board member last week and they said the strategic
plan came back from the offsite and the consultant, but it wasn’t that helpful,
and the Chairman didn’t know what to do with it. Sound familiar?
From my perspective, it was dead on arrival, and in fact your strategic
plan for 2011 may have the same status, whether you just created it,
or it got put together 6 months ago. So what ...

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2
AUG

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: actionate, Balanced Scorecard, goals, pork barrel, scorecard, startegic plan, SWOT

What is Strategic Planning Leadership

Posted by: Rodney Brim

Is strategic planning leadership a process, an evolved set of skills, a certain
type of leadership… of method of planning? Do you know it by the outcomes,
or by the process, or by the structure of behaviors and systems being used?�
Maybe it’s like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity,
“I’ll know it when I see it.”

One way to approach defining strategic planning leadership is in terms of
the images you operate with, and the images you ...

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9
FEB

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: bus, horse race, leadership, leading a strategic planning session, legs, market knowledge, outlier, self knowledge, strategic planning, strategic planning leadership, technology, transparency, value add

The Strategy and Multi-tasking Fight

Posted by: Rodney Brim

Have you ever noticed when you talk to people about their strategic plan,
that within just a few sentences they start talking about stuff that isn’t
completed yet? Often it centers around tracking, metrics, scorecards,
verifying that the strategy is correct, that it’s a good bet, an accurate predictor.

So why do so many of us never get around to creating a strategic plan,
or finishing off the strategic plan, updating it, verifying it, measuring against it?

Ok, I’m going through a checklist in ...

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27
JAN

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: attention span, calendar habits, multi-tasking, strategic management software, strategic plan, working strategically

Strategy, Follow-Up & Visiting Relatives

Posted by: Rodney Brim

Your strategic objectives, what I like to call your placed bets, can be
right or wrong, tuned in, or wildly out of sync with the market… but
ultimately only as good as the follow-up.

Let me say that another way. Your strategic plan can be bad for lots of
reasons, but it can only be as good as your follow-up. Lack of follow-up
ultimately strands every good idea.

So here’s a quick blog about follow-up. First of all, no self abuse
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12
JAN

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: follow-up, Getting Things Done, Paul Allen, reports, strategic planning, strategy, Visiting Relatives, weekly review

Strategy, Lessons Learned and KPIs

Posted by: Rodney Brim

Strategy usually gets a big benefit from accurate hindsight and lessons
learned. By-the-way, what did you pay for the lessons learned in 2010?

If someone delivered the “lessons learned from 2010″ to you in a folder…
and you looked at the cost of those lessons as a sum of unexpected costs
and the delta between projected and actual sales in 2010, would you feel
like you paid a fair price for the lessons learned? Did you get a good deal?
Or do you need to ...

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5
JAN

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: customer life cycle, Geoffrey Moore, KPIs, lessons learned, reverse engineer, strategy, value proposition

The Opportunity to Turn it Around Before the New Year Starts

Posted by: Rodney Brim

You’re probably thinking, “What opportunity”?

Many people we talk to aren’t seeing many opportunities and echo the
perspective that there is less cushion, things are tight and not only don’t
they see an opportunity, but in fact are searching for two things as the
year comes to a close. Those two things, those opportunities, are:

1. How to find more sales (or budget) dollars? and

2. What to do now to ensure 2011 is different than 2010?

Does this sound like you? If so, let me save you some ...

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13
DEC

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: 80-20 rule, action plans, cushion, goals, learning from the past, lessons learned, new year, opportunity, repeating the past, Sales, scorecard, strategic planning

3 Confessions about Strategic Planning

Posted by: Rodney Brim

The past couple of weeks I’ve worked with 4 different organizations on
strategic planning. They represented the gamut from for-profit, to charities
to government. Each represented a confession of sorts. The type you
might make if questioned about your own strategic planning process.
I thought you might be interested in listening in on 3 of the confessions.

1. Everyone is light on research and quick to substitute discussion for
knowing the facts.

Here’s some of the questions that I need data ...

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8
OCT

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: Balanced Scorecard, confession, data, money funnel, research, shiny factor, strategic planning

The Difference between Strategic Planning & Financial Planning

Posted by: Rodney Brim

The question of what’s strategic versus a financial plan comes up often.�
In fact when reviewing strategic plans it’s easy to see that they overlap
and at times get confused. Let me share 3 simple “rules of thumb” I use
to sort this out.

Before I go into what works for me, let’s go over a couple of examples:
1. Here’s an example of a recent news blurb on Symmetricom.
“SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Symmetricom Inc. slid ...

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12
AUG

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: financial, financial planning, growth, strategic planning, strategy, survival

Strategic plan; Thought, Actions or Write-up

Posted by: Rodney Brim

This week I read a blog from Fred Nichols, discussing whether most of the
value is in a strategic plan, or in the process of creating one. It got me
thinking about how to define what really is a strategic plan, hence this
blog and a question (well actually several) to you:

If the strategic plan is essentiallythe plan to get ahead at the business
level, is it something that’s written or stored in a software ...

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16
JUL

Categories: Strategic Planning & Execution

Tags: analytic, Fred Nichols, Myers-Briggs, personality type, strategic plan, strategic planning

Page 1 of 3 12 3

Archive for 'Strategic Planning & Execution'

Think Strategy… Think Risky Assumptions

Reviving Your Strategic Plan

What is Strategic Planning Leadership

The Strategy and Multi-tasking Fight

Strategy, Follow-Up & Visiting Relatives

Strategy, Lessons Learned and KPIs

The Opportunity to Turn it Around Before the New Year Starts

3 Confessions about Strategic Planning

The Difference between Strategic Planning & Financial Planning

Strategic plan; Thought, Actions or Write-up

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