By Mark Rhodes on June 3, 2016
LinkedIn founder and triple billionaire Reid Hoffman has two endearing mannerisms that reveal the way he sees–and reasons with–the strategic environment. First, he peppers his statements with the word so. Almost a verbal tic that would grate on a speaking coach like the overuse of the dreaded uh … but he uses it more like therefore. That […]
By Mark Rhodes on December 22, 2015
To engage in strategic thought, you must think and reflect on the big picture—on the diverse players and forces in your competitive environment. Anticipate the future. Use your right brain for intuition and wisdom, your left for planning. As Isaac Newton said “truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.” Here are 50 tips and tools for […]
By Mark Rhodes on November 5, 2015
When you are faced with the most important and strategic decision of your life, where can you go for wisdom? Can you find insight in a book of history? Facing a world in crisis, John F. Kennedy did just that. Generally, we learn skills by trying something, failing, and trying again until we get it […]
By Michael Wilkinson on April 17, 2013
Developing strategy takes time and resources. It requires the time and commitment of some of the most highly paid and highly experienced people in your organization. So if your team is not willing to invest the necessary time, I recommend that you don’t do it. Poor planning is often worse than not planning at all.
So why do you need a strategy? Why take time for planning? There are many reasons. But Leadership Strategies’ Drivers Model focuses on five in particular.
By Michael Wilkinson on February 19, 2013
The Drivers Model is the tool I have been using for over two decades to provide a robust yet simple method for taking an organization through strategic planning, project planning, program planning and numerous other planning activities. The Drivers Model is fully scalable and applies to Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations and government agencies, as well as an entire enterprise, a business unit, a field office, an individual department, or a work team.
Let’s start with the four key strategy questions the Drivers Model answers.
By Mark Rhodes on October 21, 2011
Good Strategy Bad Strategy This fresh approach to strategic thinking begins with tales of battles at sea in the days of Napoleon and continues to explain what kinds of strategies have made the difference for modern companies like Apple, Wal-Mart, Cisco, Starbucks and Wells Fargo. Author Richard Rumelt shows that many recent high profile failures […]
By Carter McNamara on March 20, 2011
When planning, it’s extremely important to match the nature of the planning process to the nature of the planners. For example, not all cultures prefer a linear, sequential approach to planning, that is, to decide mission, vision and values then subordinate goals and associated objectives. One of the most challenging aspects of any strategic planning […]
By Mark Rhodes on February 3, 2011
Imagine that you could dump all the words of a million books from the past 500 years into a giant database, and look to see how various words have waxed and waned in usage over the centuries. You could look and see when archaic words like thou and yon disappeared from popular usage. You could […]
By Mark Rhodes on January 23, 2011
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 […]
By Mark Rhodes on November 19, 2010
Strategy-making begins with an idea. Without a guiding idea there can be no sense of direction. Yet many articles and books about strategy do not address a most important matter: how to generate ideas. To conceive the essential set of ideas that we call strategy, the strategist must understand and master the art of the […]
Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, provides organizational development, consultant training and Action Learning services, and is developer of the Free Management Library. [Read more ...]