Strategic Discipline Blog

Strategy and planning are often considered one and the same.

They’re not.

This picture accurately portrays the differences between Strategic Thinking and Execution & Planning.  I’ve provided additional pictures in this blog to help you distinguish Strategy from Planning and Execution.

Most business do okay with planning (some business fail to make any plans).  Planning without strategy is better than failing to plan at all, however strategizing with planning is what great businesses do to achieve growth and success.

Annual & Quarter Planning (TWO DAY Private Workshop)

Annual and Quarterly Planning should always include elements of Strategic Thinking.  The best Annual and Quarterly Planning contain Strategic Thinking/Learning. This is so the leadership team is always focusing beyond just the immediate time frame.  As you can see by this picture on Strategic Thinking, your leadership team is thinking beyond the current year.  The exercises I’ve shared on Kaihan Krippendorff’s Outthinker Process, 8 P’s – A Powerful Way to Discover Strengths, Weaknesses, Trends, Great Strategy: Clarity On What You Want, What Does Your Customer Care About – Product Attributes,  and Calculate Your OUTthinker Score - Assessment are intended to get your leadership team thinking beyond the current year.

The Outthinker Assessment is extremely valuable way to look at your businesses Strengths and Weaknesses, since it presents it with greater context.  How do your strengths compare with your competition?  Differentiation in strengths translates into revenue growth and greater profitability. Thus the Outthinker Assessment translates into numbers you can measure.  Score low or without any level 5 differentiators and you are most likely at or considerably below industry standards in revenue and growth.

Assessing Where You Are

Working with a new customer, a considerable amount of time is always invested before I travel in for the two day workshop.  The customer usually has completed the Four Decisions Needs Assessment, with a meeting with the leadership team conducted to review the results. In addition, the company’s CEO completes a 5 page Strategic Planning questionnaire, which we review together.  We also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each leadership team member to help me understand each leader to get the most out of their contributions during the two day workshop. 

From the assessment, the questionnaire, and the background understanding of the leadership team, an agenda is created to address the businesses needs focused on accomplishing and providing the greatest impact in our two day workshop.  

You can download an overview of a Rockefeller Habits 2 Day Agenda pictured here.

Every agenda is customized to the specific customer.  No two agendas are exactly alike.  As an example, a customer may be familiar with the Scaling Up and the Rockefeller Habits, and already have their Core Values and Core Purpose identified.  A customer may already be using Topgrading to hire and evaluate their team for “A” players. 

My conversation with the CEO, the results of his Strategic Planning questionnaire, along with the Four Decisions Needs Assessment guide the elements to include in the 2 Day Workshop.  A focus for the two days will be to determine your company’s One Thing for the year and for the first quarter.

By the completion of the second day we’ll have completed an annual plan for the next 12 months, plus your first quarter plan, along with setting the meeting rhythms to make sure you stay on track, monitoring and correcting your course to achieve your One Thing for success.

THE ONE THING

More than any other element the focus to identify a One Thing (answering the question: What’s the One Thing we can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?) provided the greatest impact in my customer growth and achievement.

Creating the winning habit of Strategic Discipline, customers receive a substantial ROI within the first 90 days of working with Positioning Systems.

Request our Tenth Element of Gazelles-Rockefeller Habits – Catalyst white paper for a more detailed explanation of our coaching practice and what we provide in the two day private workshop and ongoing coaching engagement.

Investment

Your investment for a two day private workshop is $10,000, plus travel and expenses.  In order to receive the full benefit of Scaling Up, ongoing coaching to complete the One Page Plan, in addition to all the strategic elements (BHAG, Brand Promise, Meeting Rhythms) requires more than two days. We recommended ongoing coaching.  Positioning Systems provides a package to include the two day training and trial 90 day coaching to help make the investment in business coaching more affordable.  We also offer or Brand Promise Guarantee:  We will refund all compensation if our disciplined coaching and proprietary tools fail to meet your expectation.

You are assured you will succeed, and if you don’t feel we meet the expectations set in our brand promise, you receive a complete or partial refund, based on your success criteria.

We promise you will Build a Winning Habit

1. Priorities: Determine your #1 Priority. Achieve measurable progress in 90 days. Repeat every 90 days.
2. Metrics: Develop measurable Key Performance Indicators.  Develop reporting dashboards. Increase accountability. Follow Pearson’s Law to achieve dramatic results. 
3. Meetings: Establish effective meeting rhythms. Establish a Cadence of Accountability. Compound the value of your priorities and metrics.

Have you avoiding a conversation with yourself on how you can grow your business? Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com for expert help to Scale Up your business!  Or take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

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