Strategic Discipline Blog

Differentiating your business is challenging. It involves dynamic competitors, changing buyer behaviors, market conditions, trends, and frequently changing technology.

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Topics: strategy, strategy decisions, Strategy - How, Differentiation Strategy, 3HAG WAY, Activity Fit Map, 3HAG, Differentiating Activities

There’s one limitation I’ve been unable to overcome: Lack of faith or belief.

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Topics: strategy, Strategy - How, Execution, It's the Same as Strategy, Strategy, A Cascade of Choices

In A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management EffectivenessRoger Martin believes execution is the same as strategy.

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Topics: Execution, strategy decisions, Strategy Decision, Strategy - How, Winning Strategy, Execution What it's the Same As Strategy, Roger Martin, A New Way to Think

Hope is a beggar. Jim Carrey’s Quote is appropriate. It clarifies the difference between Hope and Faith. In the dictionary, Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best or a particular instance of this feeling.

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Topics: Strategic Planning, AML, Strategy - How, 3HAG WAY, Metronomics

Failure is a feature, not a bug. You learn a lot from failure!

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Topics: Innovation Process, Innovation, Strategy - How, Strategy Creation, Play Bigger, Category Design

“Terror is the ultimate way to paralyze a people’s will to resist and destroy their ability to plan a strategic response. Such power is gained through sporadic acts of violence that create a constant feeling of threat, incubating a fear that spreads throughout the public sphere. The goal in a terror campaign is not battlefield victory but causing maximum chaos and provoking the other side into desperate overreaction. Melting invisibly into the population, tailoring their actions for the mass media, the strategists of terror create the illusion that they are everywhere and therefore that they are far more powerful than they really are. It is a war of nerves. The victims of terror must not succumb to fear or even anger; to plot the most effective counterstrategy, they must stay balanced. In the face of a terror campaign, one’s rationality is the last line of defense.” ~ 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene

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Topics: strategy, Effective Leadership, Strategy - How, 33 Strategies of War

As the Cheshire cat told Alice, in Alice in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you are going it doesn’t matter which road you take. Any road will get you there.”

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Topics: Strategic Planning, Strategy - How, Key Attribution Framework, 3HAG WAY, Swimlanes

The CEO Test: Master The Challenges That Make Or Break All Leaders, authors Adam Bryant, and Kevin Sharer provide the key elements a CEO needs for success. This is not a touchy-feely book, although it does address the need for establishing culture. Nor is it a prescriptive book about how to create the right strategy. It reveals Seven Key Tests to be a successful CEO with key insights from leaders who are provided as examples.

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Topics: Discipline Plan, Strategy Decision, Strategy - How, Strategy Question, Competitive Strategy, The CEO Test

When Positioning Systems started in 1998 my intention was to help businesses discover their unique and valuable position. For 20 years I helped business create messages to differentiate from their competition. Jack Trout and Al Ries’ classic marketing book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind provided this impetus. A classic positioning example was 7-Up’s, The Uncola!

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Topics: strategy, strategy decisions, Strategy - How, Low-Cost Strategy, Differentiation Strategy, Strategy Question, Competitive Strategy, Key Attribution Framework, 3HAG WAY

Michael Porter’s Definition of Strategy is: the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities.

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Topics: strategy, market dynamics, Strategy - How, Differentiation Strategy, 3HAG WAY