Blog

How To Address Strategic Issues That Can Derail Your Efforts

All organizations will face strategic issues that can foil the best of plans. For example, the NFIB January Small Business Economic Trends Report indicates inflation remains a top concern and nearly 40% of small business owners report job openings they can’t fill. Additionally, Accenture’s Pulse of Change Index shows technology as the number one business […]

Real Time Strategy – Small Businesses Can Learn from Cargo Vessels

In 2021, the cargo ship Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal when high winds and low visibility caused it to ram into the side of the waterway. I took 6 days to get it free.   Cargo ships have become enormous. Many are “as long as the Empire State Building is tall” and […]

iStock_000012107866Small_Web

One-And-Done Strategy and Other Fallacies

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 […]

Strategy Means Focus

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 […]

A Cheesy Example of Strategy at the Speed of Thought

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 […]

Strategy Failures Have Nothing To Do With Execution

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 […]

The Decline of Strategy

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 […]

Strategy at the Speed of Business: Don’t Be a Kraft. Be a Dane.

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 […]

Why Developing Strategy Should Be Fast and Adjustments Frequent

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 […]

Why You Need A Proper Worldview of Your Business

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, […]

Next Page »