Which comes first: strategy, target, or plan? Here’s the thing—if you’re making money, there’s a competitive strategy at play. The question is: do you understand what it is? Do you have one that’s optimized? Can it drive your growth trajectory? The Rudder and North Star Framework You need both, and they serve different purposes. Your competitive strategy is your rudder—it’s …

The fact is, one of the biggest things is to not set it up—not warm people’s thinking up effectively. Your annual planning session reveals everything about your organization’s strategic maturity. Done well, it becomes a catalyst for breakthrough thinking and accelerated execution. Done poorly, it’s an expensive way to demotivate your best people. The Neurology Trap You don’t want people …

There seems to be this desire to separate the human side from the financials and even the plan, even the competitive strategy. And my answer is: why would you? The Entrepreneurial Model Gets It Right Think of Richard Branson. He would see a space, an opportunity, where he’d go, “There should be a better service, cheaper and easier for clients …

Here’s the thing about dynamic times—we think they’ll settle. We sit in leadership meetings making the assumption that there’s going to be a settling. Which is not necessarily the case. And so, we’re better to face in and figure out what are the elements in the environment that we’ve really got to understand and see how they might evolve. The …