The Monthly Strategic Planning Schedule

Last 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 […]

Make 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 […]

Strategic Performance

One 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 […]

Predicting with leading indicators

We 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 […]

How to make better predictions 1 – the shape of the curve

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. […]

Planning in Uncertain Times