“Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.”
— Sir John Harvey Jones
Wordcount: 613 Time to read: 5 minutes
When you being to believe you understand your customers needs is when you begin to lose sight of who your customer is. The demands on your customers that create change in their world can be completely hidden from yours. Ensuring you fully understand what drives your customers, over time, helps ensure you know who they really are.
Wordcount: 599 Time to read: 3 minutes
As a consultant with expertise in strategic planning, I get called to help clients for one of two reasons. They’re either trying to develop their first strategic plan or tired of having them fail. For either scenario, the reasons a strategic plan, or to be more specific, a strategic objective, fails are the same.
Wordcount: 623 Time to read: 3½ minutes
Nobody knows which ideas will succeed until one does. Success stories are often written off as bad ideas that won’t work by the experts before they’ve been tried or tested. How do you answer the question “How will COVID affect my business?” Read this post and find out!
Wordcount: 578 Time to read: 3 minutes
Sometimes the cost of not planning is negligible. Sometimes it’s expensive. The ease and speed with which a lack of planning can become fatal is almost impossible to grasp or prepare for. When it happens, game over.
Wordcount: 668 Time to read: 3½ minutes
There are big business tactics small businesses will never be able to use. That’s not true for one of the most powerful. Small businesses tend to let themselves be overwhelmed by the urgent, failing to anticipate, plan, and prepare for the inevitable changes they will face if they survive and succeed.
A business satisfied with its success that stops trying to improve screams “We’re patiently waiting to be overtaken.” and signals the competition to attack. Why would any business do that? Sadly, that’s what most do. When times are good, a business has the time, money, and resources to work on areas of weakness and look for ways to maintain its dominance. That’s when proactive changes should be made, not when times are tough and you have no choice. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Wordcount: 428, Time to read: 3 minutes
Wordcount: 543 Time to read: ~3 minutes
If an optimist sees a glass half full…
In business, most choices are clouded in grey while decisions are often reinforced by perspective. Don’t let your perspective obscure others and become your jail. Always be open to different ways of thinking.
Wordcount: 814 Time to read: 4 minutes On New Year’s Day, 2021, CNN Senior Political Analyst John Avlon began a...
Wordcount: 810 Time to read: 4 minutes Over the years, I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to watch too many large...
Three good bets with a little bit of wonkiness thrown in. Wordcount: 622 Time to read: 3 minutes This July 2020 issue...
If anybody has too much time these days, they’re just not paying attention.