Any serious strategist must ask, “How will we know when we’ve succeeded?” Strategies have intended outcomes – goals – and it’s terribly helpful if those outcomes are clear enough that success or failure will be indisputable. So, we’re offering an alternative to the usual questions such as: “Do we have metrics?” (Or worse, “Do we [...]

An introduction: We like Mike Kipp, and we’ve never met him. Over time, we’ve come to admire this fellow blogger’s ideas on strategy – and we’re a bit picky on that topic. (He also has some pretty interesting perspectives on health care, which is his main focus.) Anyway, he is a sharp thinker and writer [...]

Strategic plans almost always assume certain things to be true about the future. For example, when one company plans to acquire another, its leaders may assume they can achieve synergies to drive down costs. They might assume they are buying their way into a high-growth market or blocking a competitor’s moves. Or they could assume [...]

Why do some bureaucracies succeed while many others fail? There are endless explanations for this, and we will add one more: slow courage. We’re not talking about the kind of heroism displayed in 1987 by U.S. sailor Wayne Weaver who escaped a fierce on-board fire only to turn around and go back for his buddies [...]

In our business, we see a lot of strategic plans. In too many of them we see this cute little two-step trick we call, “The Wimp’s Way Out”: Step one: First, declare bland, no fail, effort-based goals. If possible, make them sound aggressive without actually being aggressive. Here is an example from one military command’s [...]