Archive for May, 2009

Don’t Follow This Strategy Advice!

17th May
2009
written by Michael Kanazawa

A recent article in BNET was somewhat scolding executives for needing to go to ‘Strategic Planning 101′ in response to a Dartmouth Professor’s claim that newspaper publishers are just sitting around and whining, while their businesses go in the tank. 

A clip from the article shows a somewhat insulting list of what Strategic Planning 101 is all about. Usually I just ignore this type of advice, but in this case it was so far off the mark, I had to comment.  

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Strategic Planning 101

  1. Get a bunch of smart people in a room together … without cell phones and Blackberrys
  2. Have somebody present a completely honest analysis of the competitive situation
  3. Throw out all the sacred cows and preconceived notions
  4. Brainstorm new ideas until you can’t stand to look at each other anymore
  5. Vote on them, take the top ten, assign each to an executive to develop a business plan
  6. Meet back, present the plans, debate, decide on one or two to implement, and execute

At least you’d think that’s what they’re doing, right? All those high-paid executives with fiduciary responsibility can’t just be sitting around complaining and waiting to die. Or can they? What do you think? Do Syd and I expect too much from officers and directors that shareholders depend upon to make their investment worthwhile?

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This misguided view of what strategic planning has two major gaps that are the undoing of most efforts to set and execute strategy. (more…)

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Change, Engagement, General, Leadership, Strategy