Tag Archives: vision statement

Trust Your Gut

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We are change and strategy practitioners. We have the privilege of working in many corporate settings and on a wide range of projects. Over time, when you do what we do, patterns start to emerge.

In previous articles we have written about the psychology of program management and the role of optimism and human biases in project failures and delays. We have also explored why strategic plans fail and suggest a number of remedies.

One of the reasons that strategic plans and associated projects stall is a failure to follow thru, a failure to take account of varied, and sometimes diametrically opposed, inputs and pick a way forward. Sometimes this is a change management issue, a failure to inspire and galvanise a team with an achievable plan designed to overcome human and technical hurdles. But surprisingly often, it just comes down to an unwillingness to make a “big bet”. Continue reading →

Those Dreaded Statements

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In a past life, as a technology business owner, one of my colleagues made a real effort to get us to develop mission and vision statements. I am embarrassed to say that I rebelled and poisoned the entire session. I was aghast at the prospect of my innovative entrepreneurial baby being branded by some bland mindless prose.

We have all seen appalling mission statements. They usually end up being flowery gibberish about valuing customers, or employees, or shareholders, or everyone and blah blah blah.The truth is, they are (or should be) quite central to strategic planning, and their crafting usually both precedes and follows in depth strategic analysis. They can be quite hard to create if you want them to have real meaning.

It is worth the effort, however, and your inability to create these statements is a red flag that your strategy has not been refined and may not be actionable. Continue reading →

Six Simple Questions for Strategic Planning

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Regardless of the type of strategy that you are developing; capture, corporate, change, product, etc., it is critical that you refine the strategy down to its essential elements. Complexity does you no favours. It makes the strategy hard to understand and easy to attack or avoid. Buy-in occurs when the fundamental tenants of your strategy are easily understood, easily remembered and easily put into practice. Continue reading →