Strategic Discipline Blog

With the world menaced by COVID19, why did many businesses finish 2020 as their best year ever?

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Topics: Culture of Discipline, Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage, Company Culture, Culture, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive

Do you believe you’re a prisoner to your genes?  Is your family’s past afflictions, diseases, and maladies a prediction of your future? 

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Topics: Acute Myeloid Luekemia, Business Growth, People, Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the Wo, The Advantage, Business Culture, competitive advantage, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose

In Cascade Your Annual Strategy & Planning we noted statistics from a recent leadership survey reported 92% of CEO’s feel their leadership team can communicate their strategy.   The same survey revealed that only 2% of their leadership team actually could! 

Simplifying your strategy into 35 words or less as we recommend in developing Your Strategy Statement is the first step to accomplishing this intention of a One Phrase Strategy. 

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Topics: Business Growth, strategy, The Advantage, Southwest Airlines, Strategy Statement

Do you display your company’s Core Values in your business?   Where?  Does everyone in your company to see them on a regular basis each day?  Do you have a War Room, or a public place where elements of your business like this, Strategy Statement, Core Purpose/Mission, Brand Promise are prominently on display?

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Topics: Core Values, Core Purpose, Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the Wo, The Advantage, Business Culture, How to Motivate Employees

Can a simple Dashboard provide clarity for your organization?  In The High Ground – Your Dashboard I provided an example of a business dashboard that contain both the quarterly priorities and key financial benchmarks for the company.  These would include revenue, sales costs, Cost of Goods, Overhead Costs, Net Profit, Break-Even Analysis, Cost per Full-Time Equivalent, Cash Flow and Accounts Receivables.  If you’d like to see this Excel example, send me an email with Sample Financial Dashboard in the subject line.  

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Topics: success criteria, Business Dashboards, The Advantage

Wouldn’t it be great to have a filter on your hiring and recruiting process that could tell you whether your candidates fit your business? 

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Topics: Core Values, Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, Business Vision, The Advantage, Business Culture

This morning during our monthly meeting one of my client’s debated their Core Values.  A year ago they completed them and after reading Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage, the owner determined that it would make sense to revisit them based on the definitions of Core Values that Patrick Lencioni had defined in this book. 

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Topics: Core Values, Built to Last, Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, The Advantage

What would mean to your business if everyone in your company knew exactly what direction it’s headed toward?

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Topics: Business Vision, The Advantage, Strategy Statement, Can You Say What Your Strategy Is

Who is the real enemy of execution?  It’s your day job!

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Topics: Accountability, Strategic Discipline, whirlwind of business, employee performance, Business Dashboards, The Advantage, Alignment, Execution, 4 Disciplines of Execution, business clarity

A critical component of the One Page Strategic Plan is determining Your Core Purpose.  In Patrick Lencioni’s recent book The Advantage he pronounces clarity as being critical to business growth.   To achieve this he asks six questions about your company.    The first one, "Why do we exist?" is possibly the most challenging and difficult for a business to agree upon without a leadership team’s dedication, effort and the ability to resolve conflict.  And it simply won’t be achieved without the CEO making the commitment first.

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Topics: Acute Myeloid Luekemia, People, One Page Strategic Plan, Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage, Southwest Airlines Core Purpose