Strategic Discipline Blog

Goals should cascade down and throughout your company, right?

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Topics: employee engagement, planning, Strategic Planning, People Development, Nine Lies About Work

Is planning outdated?

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Topics: employee engagement, planning, Strategic Planning, People Development, Nine Lies About Work

Sports figures often make a lot of money speaking to businesses about their achievements, the work, preparation and dedication to get there.

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Topics: planning, Strategic Planning, preparation, Art of War, Super Bowl LII

In The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan, Gary Keller shares the following story to emphasize the power of Time Blocking:

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Topics: Strategic Discipline, One Thing, planning, meeting rhythms, time management, use of energy

In Purpose - The Dickens of Your One Thing, Ebenezer Scrooge discovered, life is driven by the purpose we give it. There’s a catch Scrooge confronted. Purpose shapes our lives only in direct proportion to the power of the priority you and I connect it to.

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Topics: One Thing, planning, Top Priority, priority, Willpower, Power in the Moment

How would you grade your decision-making capability?  How is your leadership team at making decisions?

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Topics: Strategic Discipline, Decision-Making, planning, Discipline Plan, Annual Plan, strategy decisions

The opportunity to discuss the nature of preparation and the importance it played in the recent Super Bowl preceded the plan to provide you with the remaining tools for People resources from Rockefeller Habits 4 Decisions.  We’ll provide the remainder of these People tools in next Monday’s blog.

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Topics: planning, Annual Plan, Built to Last, Jim Collins, Execution, preparation

What’s the number one function of a leader?  It’s the ability to predict. 

“The fundamental journey of a growing business is to create a predictable engine for generating wealth as it creates products and services that satisfy customer needs and creates an environment that attracts tip talent.” Verne Harnish, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits

Unless a company has the ability to determine where it is today and project where its’ going to be this week, this month, this quarter, and this year, it’s not on a trajectory for growth.  It might not even be on track for survival.  A favorite quote of mine is, "When you’re green you grow, when you’re rip you rot!"

Ultimately the reason for imposing structure and instituting systems is to achieve predictability.

This is why Strategic Discipline is such a critical piece to success.

Determine your priorities. Create and monitor metrics. Develop Meeting Rhythms to build a Cadence of Accountability. 

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Topics: Strategic Discipline, planning, Annual Plan, leadership, strategy, Leadership Team

Twelve tired, sweat covered young men shuffle through the hall toward a classroom.  Each chooses a desk to sit in, plops themselves down for an unexpected respite from a grueling first week of basketball practice.  The group looks around, engages in small talk, with one team member shouting out, “Wick, do you know what this is about?”  I shrug my shoulders.  It’s a first time experience for me as well as the rest of the team.  Shortly thereafter, the new head coach enters his biology classroom where the boys have taken up temporary residence.  Coach Belke strikes a commanding appearance.  He’s about 6’2” with a barrel chest, large thick forearms, and looks every bit like the man who supposedly had a try-out with the Chicago Bears.  Immediately the room falls silent, such is the presence he dictates.  While Coach Belke has coached football and basketball before at Princeton High School, it’s been nearly a decade since he’s done either. He volunteered to take on the task of coaching basketball this year when our coach of the past three years unexpectedly left for a better teaching position. After years of dismal sports performances, this team is expected to do well.  Our sophomore year our team won the first game a Princeton basketball team had won after 37 consecutive losses.   The following year (our junior season) our team finished 13-6, 3^rd place in the conference.  Expectations are high.

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Topics: planning, Annual Plan, strategy, Strategic Planning, Vision

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Topics: planning, One Page Strategic Plan, priorities, strategy