Recently I caught up with a friend and colleague of mine – a very talented creative performer – who had entered in to the world of coaching, speaking and running seminar training events. She was telling me how a short while back she had been involved in a strategy planning session. During the session she had been filled…
If you are running a business, it is important to ask yourself now some key questions now about how you are going to develop your business in 2011. Here are 5 powerful questions to help get your thinking started: What frustrated you the most in your business in 2010? What do you want to accomplish…
The McKinsey Quarterly recently published an interview with Richard Rumelt on corporate strategy. Rumelt argued that companies become successful either through innovation, or through finding an emerging trend in the market and exploiting it earlier and more successfully than others. In Rumelt’s words: Take, for example, a rapidly growing retail chain, which needs a plan…
“Given the march of the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut, innovation is just about the only remaining competitive advantage that rich nations have.” – Peter Morris, BRW magazine, June 7-13, p. 65
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Fans of Jim Collins’ books Good to Great and Built to Last identifying top performing companies and examining their characteristics might remember that before authoring these works, Collins was a consultant with McKinsey & Company. McKinsey & Company Consulting have recently released their own research paper along the same lines as Collins’ books, analysing companies…
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SAS recently published an article reporting on outcomes from a survey of 1100 business professionals regarding their Performance Management efforts. Key outcomes from the survey include: [in most cases] most areas of the organization are involved in performance management activities to some degree . . . only 16 percent of respondents indicate that performance management…
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The Innovation Zen blog recently suggested a list of the top 10 ways to link culture and strategy. While Innovation Zen lists some good ideas, it seems to me the list misses or does not emphasise strongly what I believe are the three central activities for linking strategy and culture. These are: Identify your current…
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Forrester Research’s blog recently posted “the five basic objectives a company or other organization can hope to accomplish in the social world.” According to Forrester, “You should pick one or two, then choose your tools and strategies accordingly.” LISTENING. Finding out what your customers are really saying. Best tools are brand monitoring, private communities like…
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There are four aspects to an organisation’s innovation initiative: the innovation driver (the reason a company wants or need to innovate, and the perceived business value of innovation), the innovation strategy, the innovation implementation and assessment of innovation performance. If an organisation does not identify the innovation drivers correctly, design the innovation strategy appropriately, manage…
A recent question on LinkedIn asked how to start thinking about developing a Knowledge Management (KM) infrastructure. The starting point for thinking about developing your KM infrastructure is to have a look at what kind of organisation you have, what your main Knowledge Management needs are, and how KM will add business value for your…
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