The key to the “goldilocks” approach to your strategic planning is understanding how strategic planning can help you think about your business, your customers and your competitors.
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New technologies follow a fairly well-understood “curve”. We can think of these curves in terms of profitability, but this is oversimplifying things. Much of the thinking about technology curves in the business world comes from the work of Nikolai Kondratiev in the 1920s. The Kondratiev Curve In his work, Kondratiev suggested that there are long-term […]
Continue readingThis is one of the toughest questions to answer for most people who do strategic planning. The average company that does strategic planning typically achieves only 30% of their objectives. Since your strategic objectives represent the highest priority initiatives in your organization, why would that number be so low? First, we must recognize that strategy […]
Continue readingRobert Bradford will be presenting Simplified Strategic Planning in a series of six online presentations starting on June 17. You may participate live, and we will send video of each session to all subscribers. Each session is two hours long and will cover the entirety of the Simplified Strategic Planning process. Attendees will receive videos […]
Continue readingIt can be difficult to compete with larger companies. To many, they seem to have all the advantages and no disadvantages. There are several reasons why larger competitors make tough competitors. This week, we’ll examine the advantages and disadvantages of the larger competitor, and how you can use them strategically to build more profitable business. […]
Continue readingIf you have attended the Simplified Strategic Planning seminar or read the book, you are probably already familiar with the concepts of specialty and commodity customers. Simply put, specialty customers are those who perceive premium value in a product or service and are willing to pay for that value, while commodity customers choose based on […]
Continue readingIf you’re familiar with Google, you may have heard of the 20% rule they’ve followed since their early days as a startup. The simple rule says that every key employee needs to spend 20% of their time on projects that have no immediately visible payback for the company. While 20% may seem like a lot, […]
Continue readingLast week, I reviewed the pros and cons of our new monthly schedule for strategic planning. If you’ve been using Simplified Strategic Planning, you might find the new strategic planning schedule useful. Month 1 – Situation Analysis In the first meeting, as with our traditional schedules, you’ll review your market segmentation, and assign homework relating […]
Continue readingScenario planning can be a very important part of your strategic plan. One question that sometimes comes up is should I use a single scenario or multiple scenarios? Another question is with more than one, how do you choose what the scenarios are? Should you use more than one? A single scenario is the basic […]
Continue readingYou’ve seen it happen, perhaps dozens of times: A company makes some choice that looks good on paper, but leads to major strategic problems. No one is immune to this problem, because good strategic thinking is hard. Why is this? And how can we make strategic thinking easier? There are three basic reasons why good […]
Continue readingWith current concerns about safety and travel, it’s natural that many people will be considering doing virtual strategic planning. Making more of your work virtual is one of the big changes many of us are making to be more competitive. Obviously, virtual meetings have some disadvantages, but they also have advantages. Your online strategic planning […]
Continue readingOne of the great challenges in executing a strategic plan is getting the team to perform and be motivated by the strategy. Indeed, strategic performance in implementation is the achilles heel of strategic planning. It’s common to hear people say “We did strategic planning, but it didn’t change anything.” Obviously, the way you approach strategic […]
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