We strategic thinkers so easily get our hopes up sometimes.
Haven’t you been in those sessions before where you just know you can drive the group to truly selling out to some key objectives and committing together to make it all happen? Things are going well, you’ve got your tight list of objectives and goals, and it feels like some real barriers have been knocked down.
Then someone points out that there’s one small initiative that hasn’t been addressed in the objectives.
Then another someone points out there’s a small vocal minority that hasn’t been addressed in the objectives.
Then a couple folks realize John and Jane Doe, who have been around forever, aren’t going to think the objectives address an area they’re interested in.
And the snowball builds and builds and builds. And that demon known as consensus creeps in and starts turning tight, focused, strategic objectives into generic, limp, scattered corporate nonsense.
You’ve been there, haven’t you?
No day-long corporate strategy session or weekend retreat can survive for long without two things being forced upon everyone to ponder and pander over: 1) a mission statement, and b) a vision statement.
I’ll confess, I’ve never had a strong grasp on the differences between them. Most vision statements I’ve seen would pass for mission statements, and vice versa.
To be completely honest, I actually just realized I really didn’t know what a true vision statement should accomplish. Until now, that is.
Go read Christopher S. Penn’s post on the foundations of creative marketing. It’s an excellent post, but toward the end Chris manages to simplify and clarify both the mission statement and the vision statement so well that none of us have an excuse to mix them up any longer. To paraphrase ….
I’ve been thinking a lot about strategic planning lately. Partly because I’m in the midst of doing some myself, but mostly because I see so many of us struggle with it. Regardless of what we think we know about strategic planning, the actually “doing” always seems to be more cumbersome than expected.
To simplify, I wonder if an approach like this would work:
To help focus, the CEO sets forth the three strategic goals for the company for a given year. We will grow by X% by focusing on this, this and this in 2011.
It’s that time of year again. No, not the time for Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays. No, not the time when the ringing of the Salvation Army bells serenade our every entrance into Wal-Mart. And no, not just one more year when we wipe the dust off the Festivus pole and let the good times roll.
I’m talking about the “Upcoming Year’s Strategy” time of year.
Heaven forbid we think of a strategy for next year a moment sooner than in the final days of this year. Regardless of how much we will vow to have our strategies for the year after wrapped up by the end of the third quarter, it never happens.
I’ve been playing a lot of Risk this week. Admittedly, it’s the computer version, not the actual board game, but it accomplishes the same thing. The beauty of Risk is that it forces you to make choices, or you can’t succeed. There are a lot of other great lessons in it, too. Here are 19 vital [...]
Watching the NFL Draft can be a rather fascinating process, as it was this past weekend. There’s so much excitement in the thought of grabbing that amazing talent and seeing your favorite team add to their roster, not knowing if they’re going to pan out in the end. Over the past few years, the draft [...]
Living the Dash comments on Apple’s ability to focus, and how it pretty much proves the fact that less is almost always more. Read the whole thing. Here’s the quote by Steve Jobs on focus: “Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. I don’t know if that’s ever [...]
My wife and I spent our Friday night at the Meyerson in Dallas listening to Amy Grant and band play with the Dallas Pops Orchestra behind. It was nice, especially for my wife who is one of the biggest Amy Grant fans on the planet. As things got started, the orchestra began the tuning process. [...]
I haven’t written a post in almost a week, which is fairly rare for me. The fact is, I haven’t really had anything worth saying, or an urge to say it. I’ve got nothing to bring to the table. And for once, I think it’s better to say nothing than to say anything. I am [...]
Alternative title = Branding: Not the Instigator of Strategy John clarifies the very conundrum my feeble mind has been wrestling with the past few days: How are branding and strategy different? The answer, in short, is they are almost synonymous. More importantly, why are some people declared as gurus in branding and others as gurus [...]
