by Dana Baldwin | Aug 28, 2026 | Strategic Planning
By M. Dana Baldwin The basics of Strategic Planning can be misunderstood by those who need to determine what they are and how they apply to the overall development of your strategic plans. On one hand, some teams will overlook the importance of carefully defining the...
by Denise Harrison | Aug 28, 2026 | Uncategorized
By Denise Harrison, Executive Vice President and COO Discussions concerning waste disposal and environmental impact are showing up more frequently during strategic plan development. With disposal costs and environmental regulations increasing, companies are finding...
by Robert Bradford | Aug 21, 2026 | Strategic Planning
By Robert W. Bradford, President and CEO Recently, I discussed a simple test to tell whether an objective you set for your organization is truly strategic, and highlighted a common type of non-strategic objective, the incremental objective. Today, I’d like to cover a...
by Tina | Aug 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
by Margaret Lawrence Good strategic planning begins with customer focus. Knowing your market is critical, deciding which segments to pursue is a priority, but the process does not end there. To compete effectively, you need to create value for your customers in ways...
by Robert Bradford | Aug 14, 2026 | Strategic Planning
One of the issues that comes up in the second session of the Simplified Strategic Planning process is whether your objectives are “strategic enough”. Strictly speaking, objectives are only strategic if they have a significant impact on what you sell, how you sell it,...
by Denise Harrison | Aug 14, 2026 | Competitive Strategy
What differentiates your company in the market? What sets you apart in your customers’ eyes? What do your potential customers think? These competitive differences may be good – but they may not be good. Would it be good if your customers think your company...
by Dana Baldwin | Aug 7, 2026 | Strategic Planning, Strategy Implementation
By Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant Why do so many smaller companies have difficulty getting started with strategic planning? Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies do some form of strategic planning, but only about 25% of small companies do formal strategic planning....
by Denise Harrison | Aug 7, 2026 | Uncategorized
Denise Harrison; EVP & COO Recently I was discussing action plan progress (or lack of progress) with the action plan team. I asked the team what are the milestones for next month? What do we need to be doing in order to achieve our objective? It surprised me that...
by Robert Bradford | Jul 31, 2026 | Uncategorized
Conventional wisdom has it that sitting still is a strategic disaster – especially in high tech, but also in more mundane industries. As with many chestnuts I hear in strategic planning meetings, this one is both true and false. It’s true because the world will...
by Robert Bradford | Jul 31, 2026 | Strategic Thinking
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about strategic thinking this month. One of the things that vex me is when people overuse the term “strategic”, as if it is a magic wand that will make something – such as social media marketing – more valuable. While there IS such...
by Denise Harrison | Jul 24, 2026 | Uncategorized
By Denise Harrison, EVP and COO Some companies are using social media to position themselves as thought leaders in their industry; others are using it to provide information and better customer service. Other companies are perplexed at how social media can help them....
by Denise Harrison | Jul 24, 2026 | Strategy Implementation
By Denise Harrison, Executive Vice President and COO Are you achieving your strategy or are you slipping? How can you keep your team on track? Monitoring is one of the key aspects of successful execution. Here is a monitoring checklist – if you can accomplish these...
