Ideas

Although CEOs control very little directly, the things they do control are immensely powerful.  Specifically, the CEO controls three levers of power and influence: 1) the agenda; 2) the calendar; and 3) discretionary resources.

Most new products fail.  Among consumer food products, 1 in 10 might still be around in 5 years.  Most of those failures will be predictable when the product is launched.  Here are the five metrics to watch if you want to improve the odds.

Even the best leader has blinds spots.  But investing time and energy to get a little better at something you’re not good at is a low return activity – you might improve, but you’ll never be great.  Better to leverage your towering strengths and find a sidekick to cover your weaknesses.

The word “plan” is both a noun and a verb.  If you think of your strategic plan as the former, you’re probably doing it wrong.

With all due respect to Milton Friedman, profit maximization is not in fact the purpose of any business.  If not profit, what then is the purpose of a business?  Drucker had the better answer: the customer.

A strategic plan is change agenda and organizations in change need to address three topics: the direction, magnitude and speed of the change.

You can never get back lost time. Which is why many people end their workday feeling frustrated and stressed out – and then go home after work for a “second shift” after the kids go to bed so they can catch up. But where did all that unproductive time go? In my experience it likely went to a lot of weekly updates clogging the calendar.

Even if you know your organization needs to change, you may not know how to make it happen or how much is the right amount or in what direction.

Strategic plans do not always work. Five common failure modes are noted below. Recognizing these in advance can help avert a failed strategy.

The Leadership Team’s time is a critical and often overlooked resource in many organizations. The organizational cost in such cases is extremely high.