Alternative Selection Warning Flag 2 – An Initiative for Every Executive

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StrategyDriven Alternative Selection Warning FlagSenior executives typically ascend to their elevated positions through the contribution of significant organizational value. While these individuals’ daily activities provided ongoing benefit throughout their careers, there is seldom a more value adding opportunity than successful leadership of a strategic initiative or large-scale project. Consequently, senior leaders seeking further career development and advancement covet these initiatives; sometimes resulting in the creation of such projects to satisfy an individual’s need rather than an organizational one.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Recommended Resources – I Have A Strategy, No You Don’t

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StrategyDriven Recommended ResourcesI Have a Strategy, No You Don’t: The Illustrated Guide to Strategy
by Howell J Malham Jr

About the Book

I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t: The Illustrated Guide to Strategy by Howell J Malham Jr provides an illustrated definition of business strategy. Howell breaks down the concept of strategy into its component parts and illustrates these with real-world examples from renowned companies.

Unlike other business books, I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t is structured as a playfully interactive dialog between two characters, Larry and Gary. Through these characters’ conversations, Howell shares:

  • Common misconceptions about strategy
  • Four basic elements of strategy
  • Detailed models of effective strategies and why they work

Benefits of Reading this Book

Business leaders at all organizational levels commonly misuse the term ‘strategy.’ This misuse frequently results in miscommunications that ultimately lead to errant decisions and actions detrimental to the organization.

StrategyDriven Contributors like I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t because it brings to light the seldom recognized but often damaging problem of leadership’s misunderstanding of what business strategy is and provides a clear definition to help resolve the issue. While StrategyDriven Contributors don’t fully agree with Howell’s definition of strategy – we believe strategy represents a how not a what – we fully agree with the premise that an organization should define for itself what strategy is and then consistently apply that definition in its planning and execution efforts.

I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t is a quick and easy read. Howell’s examples of effective strategies come from well-known and respected companies making them relatable to the reader. For bringing to light and offering a solution to an age-old business planning and execution problem, I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t is a StrategyDriven recommended read.

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

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StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Principle ArticleWell-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. (See StrategyDriven article, Why Do Organizations Need Strategic Planning.) 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.

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  • A sampling of dozens of Premium how-to documents across 7 business functions and 28 associated programs
  • 2,500+ Expert Contributor management and leadership articles
  • Expert advice provided via StrategyDriven’s Advisors Corner

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Talent Management Best Practice 5 – Include Talent Needs in Business Plans

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Include Talent Needs in Business PlansRapidly changing market conditions drive businesses leaders to continually reinvent how their organizations do business, their products and their services. Regardless of the changes made, differences between the business of today and the business of tomorrow commonly necessitate a change in personnel knowledge, skills, and experiences. While acquiring some of this background can be accomplished through an initiatives’ change management program, strategic talent needs often require new foundational knowledge, skills, and experiences be added to the organization. Such additions can be costly and time consuming and, therefore, should be planned for within the organization’s long-term and annual business plans.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

The Big Picture of Business: Goal Setting… An Important Part of Strategic Planning.

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Human beings live to attract goals.

Organizations get people caught in activity traps…unless managers periodically pull back and reassess in terms of goals. Managers lose sight of their employees’ goals.

Employees work hard, rather than productively. Mutually agreed-upon goals are vital.

Failure can stem from either non-achievement of goals or never knowing what they were. The tragedy is both economic and humanistic. Unclear objectives produce more failures than incompetence, bad work, bad luck or misdirected work.

When people know and have helped set their goals, their performance improves. The best motivator is knowing what is expected and analyzing one’s one performance relative to mutually agreed-upon criteria.

Goal attainment leads to ethical behavior. The more that an organization is worth, the more worthy it becomes. Most management subsystems succeed or fail according to the clarity of goals of the overall organization.

How to Find Goals:

  1. Examine problems.
  2. Study the organization’s core business.
  3. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
  4. Portfolio analysis.
  5. Cost containment.
  6. Human resources development.
  7. Motivation and commitment.

Make Goal Setting a Reality:

  1. Start at the top.
  2. Adopt a policy of strategic planning.
  3. Strategic goals and objectives must filter downward throughout all the organization.
  4. Training is vital.
  5. Continual follow-up, refinement and new goal setting must ensue.
  6. Programs must be competent, effective and benchmarked.
  7. A corporate culture must foster all goal setting, policies, practices and procedures.

Priorities for Goals:

  1. Focus on important goals.
  2. Make goals realistic, simple and attainable.
  3. Reward risk takers.
  4. Recognize that trade-offs must be made.
  5. Goals release energy.
  6. Information leads to dissemination, leading to teaching-training, leading to insight, leading to understanding, leading to knowledge, leading to wisdom.
  7. View goals as long-term, rather than short-term.

Ways in Which Goals Improve Effectiveness:

  1. Defines effectiveness as the increase in value of people and their activities as resources.
  2. Recognizes that humans are achievement and success creatures.
  3. Goals infuse meaning into work and work into other aspects of life. Life is fully lived when it has meaning.
  4. One cannot succeed without definitions of success. One must expect something to achieve success.
  5. Failure is inevitable and is the best learning curve for success.
  6. One’s goals start from within, not from work situations. The goal-oriented person adapts to the work environments.
  7. Collaborations with other people create success. One cannot be successful alone or working in a vacuum.
  8. One is always dependent upon other people, and other people are dependent upon you.
  9. Commitments must be made to other people.
  10. One must view the future and change as affirmative, in order to succeed.
  11. Knowledge of results is a powerful force in growing and learning.
  12. Without goals, one cannot operate under self-control.
  13. Objectives under one’s own responsibility helps one to identify with the objectives of the larger organization of which he-she is a part. Sense of belonging is enhanced.
  14. Achieving goals which one set and to which one commits enhances a person’s sense of adequacy.
  15. People who set and are striving to achieve goals together have a sense of belonging, a major motivator for humanity.
  16. Because standards are spelled out, one knows what is expected. The main reason why people do not perform is that they do not know what is expected of them.
  17. Through goal setting and achievement, one becomes actualized.
  18. Goal setting creates a power of one’s life…especially the part that relates to work.
  19. With goals, one can be a winner. Without goals, one never really succeeds…he-she merely averts-survives the latest crisis.

7 Measurements of Successful Budgeting and Planning:

  1. The business you’re in. You’re highly dedicated, talented, resourceful and give customers what they cannot really get elsewhere.
  2. Running the business. Business is approached as both an art and a science. Operations continue to streamline and are professional and productive. Demonstrated integrity and dependability assure customers that the team will perform magnificently.
  3. Financial. Keeping the cash register ringing is not the only reason for being in business. You always give customers their money’s worth. Your charges are fair and reasonable. Business is run economically and efficiently, with excellent accounting procedures, payables-receivables practices and cash management.
  4. People. The company is people-friendly. Collaborations assure that top talent is assembled. The team is empowered, likeable, competent and demonstrate initiative and judgment.
  5. Business Development. Customer service is always the focus…for and with clients. Communications are open, frequent, professional and with a deep sense of caring.
  6. Body of Knowledge. There is a sound understanding of the relationship of each business function to the other. You provide leadership for progress, rather than following along. You develop-champion the tools to change.
  7. The Big Picture. Approach business as a Body of Work…a lifetime track record of accomplishments. You have and regularly update-benchmark a strategy for the future, shared company Vision, ethics, Big Picture thinking and ‘walk the talk’.

About the Author

Hank Moore has advised 5,000+ client organizations worldwide (including 100 of the Fortune 500, public sector agencies, small businesses and non-profit organizations). He has advised two U.S. Presidents and spoke at five Economic Summits. He guides companies through growth strategies, visioning, strategic planning, executive leadership development, Futurism and Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. He conducts company evaluations, creates the big ideas and anchors the enterprise to its next tier. The Business Tree™ is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. To read Hank’s complete biography, click here.