Author Archives: gfrosst@gmail.com

Why Strategic Planning Fails, And What to Do About It

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Many companies do a great deal of strategic planning and presentation preparation and then go offsite for a few days once a year to establish the company’s goals and direction for the next 12 to 36 months. The executive correctly understand that they needed to engage in this exercise to get everyone on the same page.  It is also an annual perk for the staff involved.

Unfortunately, in our experience, these sessions can be generally useless unless the underlying process is very well developed and executed. There are many traps that can sideline good intentions. In fact, most executives that we have engaged over the years say that they’re unhappy with their strategic planning process. So while they know that strategic planning is necessary, they don’t fully realize the benefits they were hoping to attain from it. Continue reading →

The Five Stages of Strategic Grief

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Way back in 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote the book “On Death and Dying” in which she described a model commonly referred to as the “five stages of grief”.  Applied to terminally ill patients, the stages were: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance.

The model stuck and has been used in many settings. It transpires that a variation on the theme has relevance in the field of business marketing and competitive forces.

Surprised and intrigued? We were. Continue reading →

Known and Unknown

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In February of 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense for the United States, made his now famous “There are known knowns” statement.   Love him or leave him, Rumsfeld’s remarks were widely quoted and have since found their way into numerous writings. It transpires that although we believe that his statement is logically incomplete and it has been criticised as an abuse of the English language [1], it is worth dissecting as it relates to the development of business strategies. Continue reading →

A World of Change

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The business world is undergoing rapid change … again.

We see change being driven by many factors, including;

  • Evolving technologies such as social media, smart phones and tablets,
  • Cultural flattening caused in part by inexpensive world travel, globalization and cross border media access,
  • Changing attitudes towards employment,
  • Rapidly changing social and economic conditions, coupled with evolving outlooks on wealth and security in World’s fastest growing economies – China, India, Brazil and others,
  • Upward pressure on the price of oil, despite recent fluctuations – and growing concern about CO2 levels (400 ppm and growing) and their implications, and
  • The recent financial disruptions that have rippled across the highly connected world of business.

Rapid change has happened before; it was once triggered by the industrial revolution and again by social changes spurred by two world wars and the rise of cheap oil.  Continue reading →