If 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 […]
Continue readingIn the first two articles about predicting the future, we looked at types of curves and leading indicators. These tools are useful ways to predict trends, but tends have limits, too. Today, we will look at the types of things that disrupt predictions made with the first two tools – or any other tool. In […]
Continue readingWe can improve our predictions in strategic planning by predicting with leading indicators. You may have hear of the Composite Leading Indicators, a statistic used by the Federal Reserve to predict recessions. This tool is a good way to anticipate changes in a dynamic system. Choosing important leading indicators for your business may be simpler […]
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One of the things we cannot avoid in strategic thinking is making predictions. While predictions, being assumptions, inevitably carry the risk of error, there are things we can do to make better predictions. When you can match an understanding of future trends with a clear vision, your plans are much more likely to be successful. […]
Continue readingWhen most people are traveling on a highway, stopping for fuel or food involves an interesting decision making process. We often exit the highway and look for a restaurant or gas station that will meet our needs. Naturally, a strong brand preference may cause us to choose one exit over the other, but, without a […]
Continue readingWhat we need when there is great future uncertainty Over the years, I’ve taught many concepts that are vital to good strategy. One of the key struggles many have with strategy is that our assumptions can turn out to be incorrect, rendering some of our strategies less useful. Right now, many of us are struggling […]
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