You've just finished your strategic planning sessions, the whiteboards are full, the mission statement is clear, the vision statement is inspiring, the corporate strategy and strategic initiatives are agreed and aligned and everyone is smiling and nodding at what a wonderful outcome. Fast forward 3 months and the shine is off the apple, people are busy again and it seems that things just aren't getting done and the plan is wallowing. Unfortunately this is the outcome of most strategic p... Read Full Story
I know that the idea of One Page "X" for business has been touted for quite some time but it seems to be all the rage again, at least in the Blog and Twitterspheres that I have been hanging out in lately, a quick search of the One Page world shows that there are: One Page Business PlansOne Page Strategic PlansOne Page Project Managementand the list goes on (see an entire compilation at Amazon). There are even entire works of Shakespeare printed on one page, but that is probably a differ... Read Full Story
Having created and implemented strategic plans in a number of company and organization types I have often noted the Jekyll and Hyde complex that seems to surround the strategic planning area. My recent check of the Twitterverse and Blogosphere highlighted again the wide variation of opinions on the subject of strategic planning:"All this swot etc is crap ...I can t believe mbas do this sh....t for 2 whole years""thinking of swot analysis. shoot me now!" "We did some strategic planning e... Read Full Story
As many of our readers know, we believe in eating our own dog good and we are regularly documenting our own strategy implementation
process as a startup company to share with our customers and readers. The following post focuses on our social networking
strategy, which is an action item within the strategic element we called Develop/Implement Marketing Strategy. Social networking is still a relatively new concept for many businesses and falls into two very wide oponions, that of being essenti... Read Full Story
Wikizines are interactive magazines that anyone can create or edit - and this one is called "Start-ups and Emerging Growth Companies". Here you can find fresh voices and respond in real time. Some members write articles about recent news and trends related to the wikizine's topic, others recount relevant personal stories or share their favorite pictures and video clips. Got an interesting idea or story to share with other members of this wikizine? Well, then put on your journalist's cap and... Read Full Story
Wikizines are interactive magazines that anyone can create or edit - and this one is called "RapidInfluence". Here you can find fresh voices and respond in real time. Some members write articles about recent news and trends related to the wikizine's topic, others recount relevant personal stories or share their favorite pictures and video clips. Got an interesting idea or story to share with other members of this wikizine? Well, then put on your journalist's cap and add your own article! Read Full Story
We've been asked this question quite often by companies and organizations both large and small who are working on strategic planning. The fact of the matter is that strategic planning is a lot of work and requires a big time commitment from someone to bring together the people, facilitate the process and get down to the actions required to implement a strategic plan. What most people are really asking though is do I need an "outside" vs. "inside" facilitator to help me with this process?Ch... Read Full Story
As part of our continuing to document our own strategy implementation process as a startup company, the following post focuses on our CRM strategy, which is an action item within the strategic element we called operational systems implementation. For many early stage companies CRM activities can creep up on them simply because CRM is not only about the first sale, which is easy to recognize, CRM includes many firsts:First potential leadsFirst potential partnersFirst customersFirst customer se... Read Full Story
Earlier this week the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that supports Wikipedia put out a call to action for help in developing its strategic plan:If everyone who cares about Wikimedia — from the casual reader to
active volunteers — could come to a shared understanding of where we
want to go, we would have a much better chance of actually getting
there. See the call to actionKnown for bold statements and large goals since its founding this call to action is not surprising and c... Read Full Story
For the first time in the 15+ year history of the Bain & Company survey on Management Tools and Trends 2009, strategic planning was displaced as the #1 business tool and it was replaced by benchmarking. At first blush one might say "hey that was a good run that was had by strategic planning" and it was time for a new management tool to influence the growth of enterprise companies.
After thinking about this I started to wonder:
If enterprises were making business deci... Read Full Story
