When developing strategy, managers are often called upon to interview executives and other managers on a variety of issues facing an organization. Questions often arise concerning the organization’s vision, or its critical success factors, or key strategies, objectives or goals. “What is a strategy? How does it differ from a goal or an objective? How [...]
(Guest post from Michael Zipursky.) Lack of focus. That’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a consultant. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, whether you’re a marketing, management, or public relations consultant (or any other type of consultant for that matter). The client of today has almost infinite possibilities to choose [...]
The historian Alfred Chandler of Harvard Business School wrote a seminal book published in 1977 on the history of strategic decision making at the highest levels of Corporate America , including DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil and Sears Roebuck. The book was called The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. In this work [...]
Simply put, strategic planning is clarifying the overall purpose and desired results of an organization, and how those results will be achieved. There are different ways to do that planning, depending on the purpose(s) of the planning, the life cycle or stage of development of the organization, the culture of people in the organization, types [...]
The Law of Nemesis is a useful concept for leaders, strategists and strategic planners. In a nutshell, the law states that if things are going well in your enterprises, you must be aware that Nemesis is lurking, since no successful effort goes unnoticed by competitors. Mark Rhodes of Strategy by Design explains the concept in [...]
How One Typical Facilitator (Mistakenly) Concluded the Client Wasn’t Doing Strategic Planning I got a call last week from a facilitator, asking for advice about an aspect of strategic planning. He kept asserting that his client, a manufacturer of outdoor recreational equipment, wasn’t doing strategic planning. I asked how he came to that conclusion. He [...]
Nike makes shoes, right? Well, not exactly. Nike is a wonderful company with superb marketing capability. But Nike outsources the actual manufacturing process to someone else. So in that sense, Nike does not make shoes. Nike’s competitive work is the design and marketing of athletic shoes. Obviously, the company has succeeded for years at doing [...]
What Is an Organic Approach? Organization and management sciences today are placing a great deal of attention to naturalistic approaches to development. One of the most prominent approaches is called “self-organizing” systems. These are systems that develop primarily according to certain values, rather than according to specific procedures. Biological systems (people, plants, animals, etc.) are [...]
Few plans are implemented as intended. That’s one of the reasons that people lose faith in planning. They expect their plans to be implemented exactly as described in the plan. One of the unfortunate aspects of this situation is that many consultants assert that “planning doesn’t work.” It does work when it’s done well. During [...]
Mark Rhodes' expertise spans business strategy, strategic decision making, and organizational design and change. His work includes advice on design and measurement of innovative work systems.
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Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, provides organization development, strategic planning and consultant training services, and is developer of the Free Management Library.
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