How To Think, Plan, & Act Strategically…Every Day.

It’s a jam-packed episode as we dive into a proven framework to create a strategic team, and help your team set clear and compelling strategic direction. First, I discuss ways to maximize your strategic leadership potential by reviewing the 3A  Strategic Thinking framework. Here you’ll learn to apply several new strategic tools to your business to create more insights, make strategic trade-offs and better align your priorities with your time. I’ll then chat with our dead guest, Dr. Igor Ansoff, considered by many to be the father of strategic management.  Finally, I share Dr. Seuss’s take on  strategy, and dive deeper into how structure follows strategy and why failing fast may not be as great as it seems.   What You’ll Hear In This Episode:

• Why you should stop people from throwing “strategic” in front of other words to make them sound important
• What does “being strategic” really  mean?
• How to stop the villain Jargon Goblin from confusing your team on the common business planning terms
• Today’s dead guest, Dr. Igor Ansoff, known as “The Father of Strategic Management” on how to become more strategic
• Research shows that one-third to one-half of new chief executives fail within their first 18 months.
• If you follow the practice of failing fast and often, you may soon be an unemployed CEO!
• The #1 cause of business failure is…bad strategy.
•  The 3A Strategic Thinking Framework: acumen, allocation, and action.
• Nearly half of the activities that managers work on are actually tasks that could be delegated to others.
• The importance of creating an Insight Network and harnessing your people’s insights on a regular basis
• Completing a Decision Inventory to clarify decision rights
• A whopping 71% of executives say their meetings are unproductive and inefficient.
• Developing a Time Tracker to better align your priorities and time
• Dr. Seuss’s take on being strategic?

 

Quotes/Tweetables:

• “Strategic: possessing insight that leads to advantage.”
• “At the heart of strategy are two components: insight and advantage.”
• “Taking the time to think strategically and plan appropriately will lead you to succeed fast and often.”
• “Strategic decisions are not self-regenerative.”
• “How often do we get caught up in the seemingly endless cycle of fire drills that distracts us from proactively thinking through and focusing on creating and executing our strategies?”
• “Being a strategic leader is not a nice to have these days, it's a must-have.” 
• “If your team’s strategic plan is nothing more than a rehash of last year’s tactics smothered in a mountain of customer data and spread out across 75 PowerPoint slides, then grab yourself a frosty, cold can of Insight Hard Seltzer…And please, strategize responsibly.”

 

Connect with Us!

Strategic Thinking Institute

Rich Horwath on LinkedIn

Rich Horwath’s YouTube Channel

StrategyMan vs. the Anti-Strategy Squad: Using Strategic Thinking to Defeat Bad Strategy and Save Your PlanDeep Dive by Rich Horwath 

Elevate: The Three Disciplines of Advanced Strategic Thinking by Rich Horwath

 

Mentioned : 

Dr. Igor Ansoff

Jack Dorsey

Tom Gentile

Tim Cook

Harvard Business Review - One-half of Chief Executives Fail Within 18 Months

Harvard Business School Professor Boris Groysberg

The Visible Hand

Keywords: strategic thinking, strategy, strategic planning, strategic, tactics, goal, goals, objective, objectives, plan, planning, business strategy, business acumen, executive coaching, executive coach, leadership development,, leadership, rich horwath, effective meetings, CEO strategy, CEO coach, jack dorsey, igor ansoff, productive meetings