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 your competitors can’t. Look to your value chain to accomplish this. What […]
Continue readingOne 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, or how you beat or avoid competition. A set of well-executed, […]
Continue readingWhat 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 is difficult to do business with? Would you know? What […]
Continue readingBy 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. Many companies appear to get by without doing formal planning for some period of […]
Continue readingDenise 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 the team could not identify the […]
Continue readingConventional 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 continue to move on with or without your company – […]
Continue readingI’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 a thing as “strategic social […]
Continue readingBy 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. There are many examples of how to use the various forms of […]
Continue readingBy 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 items you are well on your way to successful […]
Continue readingOld News The ability to take a CAD drawing and create a physical prototype using 3-D printing was breakthrough technology 20 years ago. Now most design engineers use this capability to speed the new product development process quickly moving from concept models to functional prototypes into production. New News While visiting Stratasys, a leader in […]
Continue readingBy M. Dana Baldwin What are the characteristics of a good leader? While there are many fine attributes that a leader should have and exhibit, what leadership comes down to is the ability to interact and lead people to accomplish tasks which lead to the success of the organization and of the individual. In a […]
Continue readingVisiting Brazil I came across an example of how a company can create a competitive advantage by focusing on a relatively unattractive market niche. Embraer is now the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world – much of its success results from its decision not to poke the 800 lb. gorilla (gorillas – Boeing, Airbus) in […]
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