Category: Strategy
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How the Grinch Stole the Strategy?
At many of our client companies, the year-end is also a flurry of actitivy – not gift-wrapping and hanging lights (although we do still hear stories of office holiday parties), but scrambling to meet year-end goals while reconciling and negotiating budgets for the upcoming year. Just like we busy consumers…
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Product Management Holds the Keys to Effective Strategic Marketing
Over the years we have written several articles about the pitfalls of focusing too much on your product, including: Is it time to take the ‘product’ out of product management? and Warning: No-one Cares About Your Product! This time we are going to make the case that product management is…
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Enter the Matrix…the Ansoff Matrix
Identifying a winning growth strategy for your business can be one of the most difficult and often contentious activities you undertake. The allure of chasing that new “high growth” market is strong. On the other hand, the inertia to “stay the course” can feel comfortable to many. Finding a way…
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Bottom-up is Not Enough
We are on record as strong believers that the best strategies start bottom-up – in fact, we called our book “Grassroots Strategy” for that reason. Our experience is that the best ideas come from the front lines, the people who work day-to-day with customers and/or technologies and can see creative…
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Impactful Strategy Lessons from the Maasai Tribe
You have likely seen pictures of the Maasai – the tall, lithe herds-people wrapped in their colorful blankets or shukas living much the way they did four centuries ago, before European nations began carving up Africa. Much has been written about their culture that they have stubbornly maintained even as…
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Your Organization is Hungry for a Strategy
We recall a rather depressing conversation with the CEO of a medium-sized company several years ago. We were trying to stress the importance of articulating a strategic agenda when he effectively shut down the conversation by asserting, “we have a three-pronged strategy: operational efficiency, organic growth and acquisitions. People need…
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Bringing Your Strategy to Life
Many years ago we worked for a client in the commercial waste management business – they hauled garbage from commercial businesses and construction sites. We were called in because, despite having spent a large sum with a top-tier consulting firm for their strategy, they were stuck on how to implement…
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Do You Know the Momentum of Your Business?
When we run strategy workshops with clients, we usually start with a discussion of the momentum of the business. Borrowing from the concept of momentum in physics, this is our attempt to capture the trajectory of the business – where it is likely headed in the absence of any change…
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Make Sure You Don’t End Up With a “Paper Strategy”
The last two years have been pretty crazy. Whether your business has been doing well or badly in this environment, much of the last two years have probably felt a lot like crisis management. Starting with the new year in 2022, it’s a good idea to refocus your efforts on…
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Don’t Wait for the Perfect Mission and Vision Statement to Create a Strategy
We often talk with companies who are waiting to work on their strategy because they are reworking their mission and vision statements. There are key differences between mission, vision and strategy and it is essential they all fit together to drive impact. Successful companies connect these three pieces together to…
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Do you Prefer Superhero Strategy Lessons from DC Comics or Marvel?
When we were kids (yes, we had cars and televisions back then), there was no doubt that the DC universe of superheroes was cooler than the Marvel Universe. DC had Batman and Superman, the two coolest crimefighters, plus we had the Justice League cartoons on Saturday mornings and Lynda Carter’s…
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In search of …… silver bullet strategy
Too often, companies believe that the purpose of strategic planning is to find some magical ‘silver bullet’ that will solve all their problems and guarantee a path to profitable growth. A frustrating conversation with a client we had a few years ago comes to mind: Amphora: What do you think…
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Strategies to Stand the Test of Time
Is your strategy precise or robust? Precise: “Exactly or sharply defined or stated” (Merriam Webster Dictionary) or “Marked by exactness and accuracy of expression or detail” (Oxford English Dictionary) Robust: “Capable of performing without failure under a wide range of conditions” (Merriam Webster Dictionary) or “Sturdy in Construction” (Oxford English…
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“I know it when I see it”
Defining strategy so your organization can soar. Many mid-sized companies become successful based on the intuition and experience of the CEO (often the founder) and sometimes one or several members of the Senior Management Team. Oftentimes they understand particular customer problems well and have developed offerings that uniquely solve these…
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Are You Ready to Come out on Offense?
With all the major sports leagues shut down, perhaps it is more important than ever that we keep alive that grand American business tradition – the sports analogy. So here it goes: boxer Mike Tyson once said “Everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth.” At this…
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Strategy, Focus and the Perfect Pint
In 1759, Arthur Guinness leased a disused brewery in Dublin and began producing beer for the local market. Like most brewers of his time, he produced a variety of beers to meet a variety of tastes. But by the late 1770’s, Guinness was becoming known for his porter. The dark…
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Not-for-Profit is a Tax Status, Not Your Strategy
We are asked from time to time if our ‘Grassroots Strategy’ framework applies in the nonprofit world. After some reflection and a couple of attempts to make it work, we are convinced that it does work. However, we have come to realize that nonprofits frequently need to add an additional…
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Why do I need a Strategy if I have a Corporate Strategy?
Now is the time that you can settle into running your business. You have a set of sales targets, budget requirements and maybe product launches or geographic expansions that you have planned for and committed to for 2020. But independent of all of this, do you really know what you…
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Now that you have an annual plan, do you really have a strategy?
If you are like many of our clients, you may have thought about strategy and long-term goals sometime in the late summer/early fall and probably presented something to your leadership and/or your board at that time.