Entries by Nathan Ives

Strategic Planning – How Much Should Organizations Spend on Business Planning?

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Well-crafted strategic and annual business plans provide a sense of purpose and direction. They establish the operations and initiative activities the organization will implement in order to achieve defined outcomes. Furthermore, these business plans serve as a communications mechanism to drive alignment of management decisions and employee actions to the effective and efficient achievement of the organization’s mission goals. Without business plans, time and effort may be applied to activities less directly focused on achievement of the organization’s goals thereby wasting the business’s precious limited resources.

A new way to look at questions and engagement: emotionally

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When you’re asking an existing or prospective customer a question, the object is to get them to think and respond emotionally. To most salespeople this strategy sounds like a foreign language. START YOUR THINKING HERE: The sale is made emotionally and justified logically. Once you understand that fact, it makes perfect sense to engage the […]

StrategyDriven Leadership Conversation Episode 7 – Sixteen Sources of Leadership

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StrategyDriven Leadership Conversations focus on the values and behaviors characteristic of highly effective leaders. Complimenting the StrategyDriven Management & Leadership articles, these conversations examine the real world challenges managers face every day that are not easily solved with a new or redesigned process and instead demand the application of soft leadership skills to achieve a […]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:12 — 47.1MB)

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StrategyDriven Professional Podcast Episode 2 – Standing Out Among Professional Peers, part 2 of 3

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StrategyDriven Professional Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques business professionals can use to accelerate their careers and personal goals achievement. These podcasts elaborate on the principle, best practice, and warning flag articles found on the StrategyDriven Professional website. Episode 2 – Standing Out Among Professional Peers, part 2 of 3 focuses on the need […]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:20 — 23.9MB)

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Alternative Selection Warning Flag 1 – Too Many Initiatives

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Contemporary business leaders embrace the mantra of continually doing more with less. Each and every day, managers and employees are challenged to produce ever-increasing quantities of goods and services at higher and higher quality levels. All other things remaining equal, there are limits to what any individual or workgroup can do. Beyond these limits, output declines and quality suffers.