By M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant Strategic Planning Expert Strategic Planning is a process, not an event. It consists of a series of analyses and decisions which end up with an actionable strategic plan. Coming out of the strategies are a series of actions which need to be carried out, either now or later. In […]
Continue readingFar too often, companies put off their strategic planning – or even fall completely off the wagon – because of major strategic initiatives. It might be an acquisition, a system upgrade, a relocation or a marketing initiative, but whatever the project is, it is so big that the management team feels there is “no time […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison, EVP Try, Try Again Yum Brands did not get it right at first, they had several aborted attempts; first in Hong Kong and then in Taiwan. But rather than simply giving up, they asked what would we do differently if we were to do this again? Here are some of the answers […]
Continue readingby M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant Strategic Planning Expert In an earlier article, we discussed the Expand strategy – Growing our selected market segment much faster than the overall segment is growing. Because we will be grabbing a competitor’s share, it is an aggressive strategy, often involving considerable expense and time of key people. In this […]
Continue readingProfit, many would say, is profit. But in reality, profit comes from several different sources, and the type of profit you are getting in your business can be very important in thinking about your strategy. Profit that comes from a temporary or threatened situation, for example, should be treated quite differently from profit that comes […]
Continue readingby M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant In the 80s, families, teens, many of us used to go to Blockbuster Video to select movies for our entertainment. The business model was simple: go to the store, wander the aisles, select one or more videos to bring home, watch the videos and bring them back to the […]
Continue readingby Robert W. Bradford, President/CEO For years, we’ve told people that too many market segments leads to bloated and ineffective planning. This is true – at some point, you simply end up with more details than your team can wrestle with in your strategic planning. It is, however, also possible to have too few market […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison, Vice President Is your team honest with itself when discussing progress of your action plans? Or is your team convincing itself that things are really on-track when they aren’t even close? Recently I have come across a number of cases where teams have given themselves high marks on achievement, but the real […]
Continue readingby M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant Great Companies develop Strategic Plans which incorporate agility in execution. What is generally meant by being agile? Most companies intend to carry out their goal of being agile by becoming more responsive, more sensitive to meeting their customers’ needs and preferences and doing all of this more rapidly. How […]
Continue readingBy Robert W. Bradford, President/CEO At the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, we have always valued simplicity. Lately, however, we have noticed the growing popularity of extremely brief strategic plans -many of them touting themselves as “one page strategic planning”. While some strategies could indeed be summarized in a single page, my own belief is […]
Continue readingBy Denise Harrison, Vice President Strategic Planning Expert Strategic planning and risk assessment – yes, you must look at what would happen if…If you fail to assess and mitigate risk during strategic planning you could end up with a BP-like disaster. While the exact causes of the Macondo rig disaster are not yet known, it […]
Continue readingby M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant In strategic planning, there are five basic strategies one may pursue: Expand, Maintain, Contract, Milk or Withdraw. The most aggressive strategy is Expand. What does an Expand strategy encompass? First, let’s define the Expand strategy so we have a basis on which to base discussion. The dictionary defines expand […]
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