All business planning is not strategy
Posted by Grant Brewer
The idea of what is strategic or what comprises strategy is often confused. The terms themselves are so overused that they risk losing any meaning at all. What is often necessary in organisations is a sense of getting back to basics. It is often forgotten that strategy is about the "big picture"; it relates to the overall landscape or context within which an organisation exists. Strategy is not about the day to day tactics.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
implementation (10) | strategy (8) | leadership (7) | planning (1) | strategic conversation (1)
Taking stock of your strategy
Posted by Grant Brewer
The start of a new year is always a good time to step back a little from your day to day leadership or management tasks and think. As a leader, it is valuable to make time to think, to learn and refresh your ideas. When it comes to strategy, time away from the business can add clarity to your ideas and ensure that you don't mistake the strategy process for the real outcome of organisational strategy. This is a common mistake and it leads to strategy ceremonies that serve the strategic planning process, but that are not focused on getting the organisation to focus around a specific purpose and direction.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
implementation (10) | leadership (7) | execution (3) | people (1)
Guiding innovation
Posted by Grant Brewer
Every business thinks that is should innovate. It is usually not good enough simply to be an innovative organisation; your organisation also needs to be capable of managing the flow of new ideas and of nurturing these ideas to life. The key to creating an innovative organisation is to make innovation a part of the culture of the organisation. A key part of this cultural change is about creating the context in the workplace in which innovation is most likely to happen. Frequently this means creating an empowered, team oriented environment. Working alongside the culture is an effective management process that guides and nurtures ideas with all the artistry of a tight-rope-walker. It isn't going to be an easy walk, but the reward at the end of the line will be worth the effort.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
leadership (7) | innovation (3) | innovation management (1)
The first hundred days
Posted by Grant Brewer
So you've been promoted, or taken on a new role or a fresh direction in your career. Maybe you've taken on the turnaround job of a lifetime. So the question is: where are you going to start, how are you going to leave your mark on your first one hundred days? A fresh start brings the opportunity to reshape and sweep the slate clean (or at least a little cleaner!). As a manager, you often need to be able to take a new situation and impart an immediate sense of leadership and focus on the team and their situation. Your thinking might incorporate these ideas.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
implementation (10) | leadership (7) | value chain (1) | turnaround (1)
Preparing yourself for leadership
Posted by Grant Brewer
Last month outlined ideas to focus your first hundred days leading a new team, but what if you're not yet leading the team? What do you need to develop to make sure that you're going to be an effective and charismatic leader able to inspire commitment, demand discipline and achieve performance? Here are some of the characteristics or capabilities of people that make good leaders and managers. Be warned, great leadership does not follow a formula and there is as much art as there is science in developing as a leader.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
leadership (7) | career (1) | personal growth (1)
Is your strategy implementation failing?
Posted by Grant Brewer
The strategy is defined. You're a leader - your job is to develop the strategy for your team. Wrong! Your job is to deliver results. Coming up with strategies is often the easy part since it is frequently an intellectual activity. Choosing between alternative ideas and then managing their implementation is the hard part. Quite often, managers are not as well prepared for managing projects that cut across functions and business processes, where most of the project team are not under their direct management.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
implementation (10) | strategy (8) | leadership (7) | project management (1) | portfolio management (1)
Innovative strategy is more than passion
Posted by Grant Brewer
It is not unusual to see organisations that are struggling because they allow the passion and the belief in a new idea to masquerade as strategy. It is true that new ideas will almost always fail unless someone has the passion and the belief in the idea to stay with it through all the challenges. However, fresh ideas and people that are passionate about them are not uncommon, yet successful businesses built on these same ideas are a lot less common.
Innovation is more than ideas. Re-inventing an industry or a product category takes more than research and a fresh take on the business model. Managing innovation and implementing new business models is notoriously difficult -- regardless of whether you're an established business, a new business unit or a start up company. It is a common mistake to assume that sheer passion and belief will bring a strategy to life. New ideas need the passion and the belief -- they also need good strategy, leadership and implementation.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
implementation (10) | strategy (8) | leadership (7) | innovation (3) | management (3) | change (2) | project portfolio (1) | passion (1)