There are three common notions of strategy. All of them are fallacies. Notion (nō’shen) noun: A belief or opinion; a mental image, an idea or conception. 1. Strategy is Episodic For many small businesses, strategy only takes place episodically. Times get stressful. Business models and value propositions are not forever. Finally, a strategy is […]
When you’re trying to grow your business it’s very tempting to look at every new opportunity that comes your way. You know, shiny object syndrome. But one hallmark of good strategy is focus. And it takes discipline to stay focused. It’s a lesson I learned when I was a kid on the farm. Back […]
Imagine your brand of specialty cheese going into a tailspin. You need results now. Traditional strategy methods take weeks or months. By that time, your brand will be toast (to mix my food metaphors). Time for strategy at the speed of thought. Clients that are experienced in developing strategies in this way can literally develop […]
Conventional wisdom says strategies fail because of poor execution, but conventional wisdom is wrong. Just because strategies fail in execution does not mean they fail because of execution. The top reasons for strategy failure have nothing to do with strategy execution, everything to do with strategy development. Several years ago, I started out my […]
Over the last 20 years, talk about strategy has been in serious decline. As much as a 60% decline to be more exact. Worse yet, today’s numbers are bolstered only by recent trends to understand specific applications like “social media strategy”, not strategy itself, or the numbers would be worse. And there’s one important thing […]
68,000. That’s how many pages were generated in one quarterly planning update back in the day at Kraft Foods. I know because I collected and laid out all the binders –holding just the final presentations from all the business units down to the category level– on the Kraft board room conference table so the CEO […]
Intro Kraft Foods took a monstrously long time to develop its strategic plan back in the day. I’m talking months and months. Operations would start building product cost estimates beginning in early June. Marketing began building their plans early in the third quarter. And finance, well finance was always planning. Granted, Kraft was a $40B […]
Intro Fifteen years ago two words came together to form the name of a new business: “Think” and “Way”. The combination of those two words were no accident. It represents a worldview that drives everything about ThinkWay from how people are viewed, client selection, the nature of products and services, views on profits and investments, […]
The Theory Teleology is the explanation for something as a function of its end, purpose or goal. The teleology of a saw is to cut, a hammer to pound, a conveyor to convey. In other words, the teleology or purpose of these things, the reason they were designed in the first place, is to accomplish […]
Looking for workers? Good news. A large pool of highly qualified workers is emerging. While the media is telling us daily “there’s no end in sight” for the labor shortage, that’s not totally true for everyone. In fact, there is an emerging pool of highly skilled workers quickly becoming available to small businesses (and astute […]
