If you’ve left your previous “strategy offsite” feeling like you just finished a budgeting meeting with better catering, it was likely exactly that and not about strategy at all. Most leadership teams don’t actually do strategy. They do planning and call it strategy. Not because they’re lazy or ignorant but because they’ve built habits around […]
The 7 Lies Leaders Tell Themselves About Strategy Read Post »
In a previous article, I argued that AI exposes weak leadership. Leaders who hide behind jargon, cling to control or avoid making decisions are revealed faster than ever. In a series of webinars I recently ran on strategy in the age of AI, people kept asking two questions more than anything: How can we remove the
From Exposure To Action: Leading Confidently In The Age Of AI Read Post »
In retail environments—from car dealerships to bank branches—the gap between strategy and customer experience is often wider than executives realize. Organizations invest heavily in crafting strategies, yet many fail to translate those into the moments that truly matter: the interactions customers have with employees, products, and services. Strategy is all about value creation. The value
When Strategy Meets the Customer Read Post »
Every year, executive teams around the world spend months crafting strategies—only to find, 12 months later, that they’ve barely moved the needle. The numbers don’t lie: More than 70% of strategies fail to deliver their intended results. The issue isn’t usually the strategy itself. It’s what happens—or more often doesn’t happen—after strategy design ends. Having worked with
Why Strategy Fails—And How To Make Sure Yours Doesn’t Read Post »
When the CEO of a global company got in touch, their request was a bit of a challenge: “We just finished a strategy project with this big consulting firm, and we have a leadership meeting coming up in a few weeks. Can you help us make sense of the strategy and connect it to our
Three Surefire Ways To Derail A Strategy Initiative—And What To Do Instead Read Post »
If you’ve been in my community for even a little while, you’ll have seen me mention the 9EOI Strategy Certification. And it occurred to me that while the name makes sense to me, you might be wondering, “9EOI? What the heck does that mean?” 😄 Fair question. It stands for Nine Elements of Organizational Identity.
Your strategy isn’t landing? Here’s why. Read Post »
The gap between leadership expectations and support simply blows my mind. Most leaders rise to their positions through deep subject matter expertise. If their organizations are forward-thinking, they may also invest in leadership development to help them grow into their roles. But when it comes to strategy, arguably one of the most critical leadership skills,
If you’re reading this, the chances are that you’ve found yourself in a position where you’re expected to be involved in strategy either for the entire organisation or the department where your responsibility lies – and you feel a little out of your depth. I’d like to reassure you that you are not alone. Many
Strategy isn’t a job – but you need the Skill Read Post »
For decades, the saying went: “No one ever got fired for hiring McKinsey or BCG.” These firms, and others like them, represented the gold standard for corporate strategy. But recently, a seismic shift is shaking this narrative. A top executive I know of was recently unceremoniously removed by their board—not for incompetence or malfeasance, but
If You Hire Big Consulting to Design Your Strategy, You Might As Well Be Fired Read Post »
One of the surest ways to burn money is to invest in a culture initiative. Culture often gets treated as something that can be improved with workshops and by by hanging up posters reminding people of company values. But in reality, culture is not something you can directly build. It’s an output—a reflection of how
How Leaders Shape Culture without the Fluff Read Post »
When it comes to designing strategy, I see two approaches collide. Vision-driven strategy versus problem-driven strategy. Vision-driven strategy starts with describing a desired status quo, at some point in the future, for example 3-5 years from now. Problem-driven strategy, on the other hand, aims to define and address the biggest immediate hurdle to overcome to
Problem vs vision: what you should ground your strategy in Read Post »
I challenge you to play a game of buzzword bingo with me. Take out a pen and paper and write down the first ten positively attributed potential organizational values you can think of. I will do the same. Next, check out websites of organizations or brands you regularly interact with. Read their value statements. The
All you Need is Love – Values that Work Read Post »
When you’ve been around long enough, you see patterns in behavior, individual and organizational. And you hear people say things, and repeat them again and again, sometimes really stupid things. When I say ‘stupid’, I mean misinformed, shortsighted, and simple plain wrong things that people hear and then repeat. Often they perpetuate fads and myths
10 uncomfortable truths every leader should read Read Post »
If you ask 10 CEOs whether they’d like their business to have a winning strategy, you’d probably get 11 “yes” responses. Everyone wants their business to lead with a great strategy, of course. Chances are that out of those same 10 CEOs, the majority would start strategy at the wrong end: the strategy itself. Yes,
What effective team development looks like – and what you should avoid Read Post »
Executive Leadership Teams (ELTs) often find it challenging to shift gears, from day-to-day operations to long-term strategy. This brings a number of challenges, the most obvious ones is that the No.1 ELT responsibility is shaping strategy and culture. No-one else can take this job off their plates. Here are the main reasons behind this struggle
Why ELTs struggle to focus on strategy and how to overcome It Read Post »
Why do strategies fail? Apart from making wrong choices, one topic stands out: failure to engage teams and help them understand a new strategy. Strategy communication is so crucial, yet few companies truly nail it. Before you can link individual roles, responsibilities, and targets to the strategy, people need to understand what the strategy means
Aligning Employees on Strategy – The Art of Strategic Dialogues Read Post »
“Here we go again.” This was my initial thought when a client was reluctant to establish structures for strategy implementation. I had seen similar hesitation before – and the negative consequences of lacking strategy governance. Neglecting governance – reasons vary, see below – is a bad idea. Without strategy governance, leaders and staff often get distracted
Avoiding the Tyranny of the Urgent – The Power of Strategy Governance Read Post »
Think about strategy conversations as a seed. And think about your team environment as soil. If the seed falls on toxic or infertile soil, and nothing will grow from it, but weeds. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith conceptualized the team performance curve, a J-shaped graph, illustrating five levels of teamwork. Unless you become at least
Great Teams Create Great Strategy. But Most Teams aren’t Teams. Read Post »
A couple of days ago, I posed this question to my LinkedIn network. There was a flood of responses that unveiled the essence of strategy in its various forms, partly inspired by thought leaders. Here’s a breakdown of the collective wisdom, highlighting some of the most interesting perspectives: Maximum Force at Weakest Point: Pinpointing vulnerabilities
What the Heck is a Strategy anyway? Read Post »
When a client had just completed a merger, they were shooting for the top spot in the market. While the physical aspects of the merger, such as housing and IT, went well, the cultural merger was dragging behind. The company struggled to overhaul work procedures and create a general work philosophy across all units. As
The Hardest Thing to get Right – How to Solve Your Communication Issue Read Post »
