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?
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.
Your team wants you to tell them what the strategy is? Do you know it? Do they know it?
In marketing, I’ve seen only on strategy that can’t miss – – and that is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last. – John Romero My take: Be sure not to substitute “market to” with “sell to.” You gain the repeat sales from your [...]
Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills. – Al Ries My take: The main challenge people have with strategy is that they don’t give them enough time to work. The main challenge people have with timing is they aren’t set up to respond effectively when the time is right. [...]
Brett’s note: The Vault is a periodic opportunity to look back at some of the better moments of MarketingInProgress.com. This post was originally written on May 24, 2007. If It Ain’t Broke . . . . . . don’t fix it, right? We’ve all heard that one before, and sometimes it’s true. However, more times [...]
Jim has collected an amazing collection of concise marketing tips here worth looking at. Plus, he did it all through Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites: Marketing is like a snowball. You have to keep rolling to see results. You can’t start and stop and start and stop. – Cynthia Powell www.ChicksAndCubs.com [...]
Just read this quote by Ken on Bly.com: Find a starving crowd…find out what they’d like to eat, then feed it to them. - Gary Halbert Somehow, I’ve managed to never hear this quote. But I’ll never forget it now. It’s simple. It’s profound. It’s true. Is your crowd starving, or just looking for the [...]
After reading back through this post, I see just how horribly I communicated my point. Here’s another shot at it: When it comes to communication, marketers often default to clear, concise and compelling statements. But maybe we need to give “cool” a more influential role. Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for [...]
