A few nights ago, I was having dinner with some friends, who are also business colleagues. A question came up at the table re how one the guys approaches strategic planning. He is the CEO of Financial Institution [a large Credit Union to be specific]. His answer was interesting based…
Children are renowned for their constant negotiation of even the simple things in life. What continues to surprise me is the apparent sophistication with which they approach the task. How planned it is may be hard to judge, but the effectiveness is not. My son will be five in a…
You would be hard pressed to go through a Deal Review and not have this as a question asked by one of your Executives or teammates. What do you think the Price to Win is? In general, we will always be guessing, but some guesses are more informed than others.
I was doing some work with two different clients in the past week where the concept of the “Red Team” came up in conversation. Rooted in military history, a Red Team is an inside group that explicitly challenges a company’s strategy, products, and preconceived notions. It frames a problem from…
As we enter the time of year when many companies begin to think about their Strategic Plan, it is a virtual guarantee that growth will be one of the top 2-3 strategic goals. We get to see many organizations from the Fortune 500 to the Fortune 5 Million and they…
When I ask this question of large groups, people know it is a trick question, but still default to common answers. Very naturally, our instinctive response is to think immediately of our specific products or services. The most common answers I get are that we are selling Solutions or Value,…
I am privileged to get to speak and spend time with hundreds of senior executives every year in various forums. There are smart and driven people as a general rule. There are several common themes that I get to see across this group, regardless of the size of company, industry…
I have spent the past 5 weeks running Strategic Planning sessions for Corporations across North America. I credit these organizations for understanding the opportunity to create alignment, consistency and simplicity by actually having a Plan. There are a couple of realities that I would like to discuss. The first is…
We have talked previously that the concept of strategy is all about growth. Virtually every executive that we speak with has organic revenue growth as one of his or her top priorities. As corporate balance sheets have continued to improve, the volume of acquisitions has continued to accelerate and multipliers…
This statement sounds obvious. When you think about your respective corporate strategy, the choices you make are about driving sustainable revenue growth. For most corporations [large and small], the concept of strategic planning tends to feel more like the annual budget process. Correspondingly, budgets project revenues, but by their nature…
