By Denise A. Harrison Note: This was first published in Compass Points July 2006 Over the last twenty years, your company has earned the number one market position – time to relax and enjoy? No! The mass market is now fragmenting as consumers become more sophisticated. Niches are carving up pieces of the lucrative mass […]
Continue readingBy Robert W. Bradford, President and CEO Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had some interesting conversations with a client about what we do in strategic planning. You see, there are lots of approaches to strategic planning – some of which work – but we do something just a bit differently than most. Many […]
Continue readingBy M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant Note: This article was previously published in Compass Points in June 2007 Earlier, we discussed one way to compete with a lower cost, lower price competitor: differentiation — defined as finding a significant point of difference, which will allow you an ongoing competitive advantage. However, sometimes differentiation is not […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison, Senior Consultant Many people return from a strategic planning retreat frustrated, often asking: Were we really concentrating on what is important or were we focusing on what was “top of mind”? Did we make the right decisions or were we swayed by the most persuasive person? A Better Way to Make Decisions: […]
Continue readingBy M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant How can you compete with a low cost, low price competitor? Let’s discuss price wars: They usually don’t work! When your company is competing with a lower cost competitor, you must realize they can sell and make a positive contribution to their bottom line at or below a price […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison, Senior Consultant Note: The original article was appeared in Compass Points January 2008 WD-40 Faces a Growth Challenge WD-40 faced the growth dilemma — the chairman’s goal was to grow the business by $100 million from new products…introduced during the next three years (Gary Ridge, Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2006). This would […]
Continue readingNote: This article was previously posted in Course and Direction. People make a lot of the SWOT analysis in strategic planning. As a rudimentary approach to thinking about strategy, the SWOT works pretty well. Decades of experience has shown us that great strategy requires much more focus on strengths and opportunities. There is so […]
Continue readingBy M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant Many people, including yours truly, have written extensively on the value of increasing employee engagement. There are many good reasons to do so. Included are: Better attitudes, better involvement in the success of the company or organization, higher productivity, better quality, lower scrap or rejects, better profitability, higher levels […]
Continue readingBy Robert W. Bradford, President and CEO One of the most vexing issues encountered in strategic planning is a focus on the negative, especially threats and weaknesses. Obviously, we’d all like to avoid having weaknesses, but let’s face the truth: no matter how hard you try, or how much you pretend, every organization has weaknesses. […]
Continue readingBy M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant Execution is the key to effective results for Strategic Planning. As Robert S. Kaplan and David P Norton, the authors of The Strategy Focused Organization put it, in the opening paragraph of the first chapter: ‘A study of 275 portfolio managers reported that the ability to execute strategy was more important […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison, Senior Consultant Sony exemplifies how a company must continually refocus its resources in order to optimize its future potential. An earlier article: Know When to Hold ‘em and When to Fold ‘em – Knowing when to get out of a core business is key to being successful in the future discussed how […]
Continue readingBy Thomas E. Ambler, Senior Consultant This article was previously published in Compass Points September 2007 What stories do you find yourself repeatedly telling people inside and outside your walls to illustrate “who you are” and what values are key to your organization’s success? Why do you do that? I’ll tell you why. You recognize […]
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