Christmas shopping is a very stressful time for any man.
At least it was for me this past year. And the year before that. And the year before that.
I found myself scouring the mall a week or so before the big day, searching for some clothes for my wife. The very thought of buying women’s clothes raises my blood pressure at least 30 points. Buying myself a pair of Dockers is a walk in the park, but when you start throwing women’s sizes at me, and then weird words like “petites” and “full-bodied,” I freeze. I look around seeing women far and wide looking at a full rack of blouses, picking one out and holding it up against them, and I long for the ability to spot what I’m looking for in the midst of the frenzy and do the same.
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.
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 [...]
