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Snippets on Strategy

1. The Essence Of Strategy - There are six big ideas associated with strategy. This Snippet tells you what they are.

2. Two schools of strategy: Logic and Magic. - The Logic school is by far the most common, however, on its own it is seriously lacking. It is based on several unspoken assumptions that are highly questionable.

3. Who should do Strategy: Managers Or Directors? - It's always to involve both managers and directors so everyone is on the same wavelength.

4. The case for including Tops, Middles andBottoms in your strategy development - In the long run it's quicker and better to involve Middles and Bottoms in strategy development because, as these are the people who will implement the strategies, they need to understand it deeply.

5. I Used To Think Of Myself As A Change Agent- I Was Wrong - The real power lies in what is unchanging, what is always the same, what is the essence of the thing.

6. The reason why Strategic Plans fail - We assume that strategic plans will be implemented without allowing sufficient time to change deeply held habits and behaviours It's no wonder that most strategies fail!

7. Three reasons why Strategy Implementation fails

8. Strategy perpetuates the status quo. Managers are frustrated that strategic planning does not produce novel strategies. Instead, it perpetuates the status quo.

9. How To Improve The Implementation Of Your Strategic Plan - Part 1 - Most (76%) strategies fail during implementation because of lack of resources, lack of alignment and lack of operationalisation.

10. To make it work you have to operationalise the plan - Part 2 - Implementation fails because managers fail to get the strategy off paper and into heads. Research shows they spend only 1 hour a month on strategic issues

11. To make your plan work you need to operationalise it - Part 3

12. Firing up your Strategic Plan by burning it - In strategy it's the process that's important, not the document which should be short (one page), simple and elegant; then go out and burn it.

13. Stuck In Current Business Model - Strategic leaders have the wisdom to question and change the business model that nearly everyone else follows. They understand that the current business model is outdated. It has been around for over 100 years. It no longer fits the world we live in.

14. Is Your Organisation Strategic? - Does your organisation have a clearly stated focused strategy? Does every single person in your organisation know what the strategies are and agree that this is the right direction? Does your organisation have no more than 4 strategies? Is your strategic plan summarised on one page? .... If not, you probably aren't strategic. Read this to find out what to do about it.

15. Strategy Is Top Of The Pops Again - After several years when strategy seemed to fall out of favour, it's suddenly top of the pops again. Following a period when the old ways have so obviously failed, everyone wants to think through their direction and their business model.

16. Do Your People All Pull Together? - When people don't pull together, many managers assume it's because of lack of will or workers just don't care. However, it's nearly always because of poor organisational design.

17. How to implement strategy and get it right the first time Paula meets the Wizard - This is a powerful parable, loaded with specific advice about how to run a more successful strategy process. It is based on a true story and reveals some of the most useful secrets that you can understand and use if you tap into its principles of success.

18. The importance of Purpose. - Victor Frankl once said, "Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as long as he can see meaning in it". In the same way, your people will walk over glass if they see the meaning in their work.

19. How to become as focused as a laser through alignment. - Alignment is like the focussed beam of light generated by a laser. Ordinarily, incoherent light consists of waves of many frequencies, in all phases, and moving in all directions. Light waves in a laser beam are coherent, organised in the same frequency in phase, and travelling in the same direction. This gives the laser the power to cut through even very dense materials. You have the same power available to you through Alignment.

20. Why you need to know your value proposition - All the skills and resources in the world are relatively useless unless they are all pointing in the same direction where it will make the most difference.

21. What are you good at? - Often strategy sessions spend time answering the question: "What business are we in?"; but this question is not as important as another one: "What are we good at?"

22. Where are your strategic blind spots? - Organisations are smart in some areas and almost blind in others. In strategy development this is important;because their strategic advantage depends upon building on their strategic smarts; and their strategic survival depends on seeing pitfalls in the areas where they are blind.

23. To go faster, slow down - Organisations need to go faster but working faster or longer is not the answer. Strategy is!