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Is it “just” an operational issue?
It’s not unusual, in strategic planning, to hear a team member say an issue is “just an operational issue”. In many cases, this may be correct – lots of operational issues don’t belong in your strategy discussions. In other cases, how your operation works can be central to the success – or failure – of […]
Continue readingWhat people get wrong in strategic planning – part 3: data sources and estimates
In my last two posts, I discussed two of the three things that people get wrong in strategic planning: information and buy-in. Today, I’ll be discussing the third thing: sources and estimates. Data Sources As I mentioned in a previous post, people tend to want to find definitive sources of data for their strategic planning. […]
Continue readingWhere are you on the Technology Curve?
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 readingPush Strategic Growth with the 20% Rule
If 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 readingHow to use multiple scenarios in planning
Scenario 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 readingMake strategic thinking easier
You’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 […]
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