“If you take out the team in teamwork, it’s just work. Now who wants that?”
Matthew Woodring Stover – Author

As a leader, alongside providing direction in your business, one of your most important roles is to build strong, cohesive teams and empower and embed accountability within them. This provides the solid foundations needed to successfully implement a winning strategy, whether for a company, division, brand, or function.

Authentic leadership is essential to creating a successful team — inspiring individuals to join forces and work towards a common goal. When leaders foster a culture of innovation and teamwork, they unlock the full potential of their team members. By equipping them with the right resources and support, leaders establish an environment of growth and progress that allows individuals to shine in their positions. Effective leadership goes beyond achieving outcomes; it’s also about forging solid connections and cultivating a sense of camaraderie within the team.

The Role of Trust in Building Strong Relationships

Trust is essential when creating solid relationships within a team. By prioritising open communication, trust, and mutual respect, leaders create a positive and supportive work environment that encourages individuals to bring their A-game daily. Leaders build trust by genuinely connecting with their team, finding common ground, and consistently delivering on their promises. And once trust is established, team members become more productive and greater advocates for their teammates and the changes required to make them more effective.

Charles H. Green developed the ‘Trust Equation’ model, which is frequently used in coaching practices worldwide. The equation has three numerators: Credibility, Reliability, and Intimacy, and one denominator (the single most important score) Self–orientation. The more self-centered and self-focused you are, the less trustworthy you appear to others.

As the saying goes: There is no I in team!

Click Here for more detail on The Trust Equation

Leadership Lessons: From the field to the boardroom!

The All Blacks, the champion New Zealand Rugby Union team and one of the most successful teams of all time in any sport, with a win rate of almost 80% going back to 1903 (according to The New York Times), has developed an enviable approach to building trust and creating first-class leaders.

In his article ‘7 Lessons for the Corporate World from the greatest team in the World’, Mark Thomas highlights the keys to their outstanding record:

• forge a powerful sense of purpose and identity
• use symbols to guide behaviours
• always subordinate ego to the team
• build an atmosphere of trust and cohesion
• create a team where everyone is the leader
• focus on the ‘tenths’ to create a culture of success – leave no stone unturned to improve performance and harness conflict as a force for learning and growth
• change or lose – consistently learn and evolve.

Even the best sides have their struggles, though. The All Blacks won the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987 and then had a dry spell until 2011 when they won it for the second time. During this 24-year gap, the All Blacks were the dominant team in world rugby, but there was always some reason for failure when it came to the World Cup. They were unlucky on occasion and lost at crucial times due to underlying flaws in their strategy and implementation.

There was a brutal World Cup disaster in 2007 when NZ thrashed everyone in the pool play, but (for the first time) they didn’t make it past the quarterfinals – losing to France.

The three fronts they faltered on:

Ego:                 They’d won in the pool rounds too easily; they’d beaten France so     many times before they took winning using their typical tactics for granted.

Leadership:     The team came under immense pressure with a change in French tactics. Leadership wasn’t agile and didn’t know how to respond and adapt.

Stepping up:    The whole team didn’t take responsibility for making the changes required. The reliance on the captain and coaches to do so was too high.

Following this humbling experience, significant change was implemented, embedding the lessons Mark Thomas highlights above. This change included establishing a leadership team of experienced players, with the coaching staff engaged in instilling the ‘Everyone’s a leader’ ethos’. The players had to make the decisions on the field, take risks, play to their style, and back each other. This was the platform for the tight win in the final … against France, and they continued this ethos by winning again in 2015, the first country in history to win back-to-back.

In essence – it all comes down to trust – trust in yourself and trust in your team. This applies equally in business as on a playing field. It’s also crucial when mobilising large numbers of people in a business or industry make things happen!

Capturing Hearts and Minds

You need to capture the hearts and minds of your strategic population to win their emotional and intellectual commitment. We define a strategic population as a critical mass of the people who will make or break successful implementation. They usually represent a cross-section of different functions and levels across the business. They could also include stakeholders outside the organisation.

One of the reasons that 67% of strategies fail to be implemented effectively (according to Ron Carucci ‘Executives Fail to Execute Strategy Because They’re Too Internally Focused’, Harvard Business Review, 13 November 2017) is that businesses don’t successfully mobilise people. If you don’t have a significant proportion of people engaged and onboard, working towards a mutual goal, you’re not setting yourself and your business up to win!

XPOTENTIAL MOBILISATION MODEL

In our Mobilisation Model – The first (and arguably most important stage), is to ‘Understand the Strategic Population’: Who they are, what motivates them, what is their current mindset. They are critical to breaking the current paradigm and allowing and facilitating the change to happen.

Understanding the Strategic Population also means identifying and being aware of the people we term ‘the squeaky wheels’ as you move through implementation. This is stage number 6 in our model. The squeaky wheels are the people who are not committed, not willing to commit, or may have some capability gaps that prevent them from putting their best foot forward. As you move forward with implementation, understand who the potential barriers to success are and why. These ‘squeaky wheels’ can infect the whole organisation if they are not quickly greased, aligned, or replaced.

To learn more about how we can help you mobilise your people for success:

• Visit our website at  xpotentialanz.com, where you can also
• Request a free copy of the Intro and first chapter of our book: Strategisation
• Check out our 6-minute strategy self-evaluation survey, or
• book a no obligations, no hassles, discovery call on Calendly.

Sometimes, being nosey is a good thing!

When developing a strategy, it’s crucial to identify the root cause of issues and opportunities rather than just addressing symptoms. This takes time, commitment, and a willingness to dig deeper.

In our book “Strategisation- The art of mobilising people to implement a great strategy’  we use the following model to illustrate the stepping stones required to achieve greatness. As you will see Step 3 is: ’ Prioritise Issues and Opportunities’

Many businesses tend to focus on the immediate issues they face without taking the time to understand the underlying causes. Addressing only the symptoms is like applying a band-aid to a deep wound; it may temporarily alleviate the obvious issue, but you won’t solve the underlying problem and risk the wound festering and causing more systemic damage if it goes unchecked.

Be brave – dig deep to find the root causes of issues or opportunities. Dispel the myths and highlight any barriers, no matter how politically difficult. Digging deep may involve examining multiple data sources, conducting surveys and interviews with stakeholders, and analysing trends and patterns in the industry. And, don’t  forget to look at customer feedback -good and bad!

There are several analytical tools that can be used to assess the market, your business and help reframe the situation including:

• Gap Analysis: From AS – IS to TO-BE
• SWOT/ TWOS
• VIRO Analysis
• Value Chain Analysis
• Strategy Canvas
• Customer Journey Mapping

There is still a risk with some of these tools that they will only identify symptomatic problems or opportunities, which is not enough in itself – you must go deeper.  A great tool we use that maximises the knowledge of the people in your organisation is an adaptation of the ‘5 Whys’ tool made famous by the Toyota Motor Corporation. Where possible, do this as a team, as it helps align all involved.

Here’s how it works:

Setting the stage:

1. Identify a small team to work on this process. Furnish them with the relevant information collected from the initial analysis. If there’s a lot of reading, you may split the data across the group to reduce the workload.

2. Ask each person to read the information provided twice. The first time they highlight the key data and information they think is relevant to addressing the business challenge (online or on paper).

3. On the second read, they review the highlighted materials and decide which are still relevant.

4. Write these on a post-it (real or virtual), along with the document reference codes you developed during the informa­tion collection stage. Bring the Post-Its to a team meeting.

Going deep:

5. As a group, share your post-its and group them into clusters of issues. Review all clusters, then agree on a name or short description that summarises that cluster.

6. Utilise the 5 Whys process for each cluster to understand the root cause issue, using this cascading questioning technique:

i. What is the issue?

ii. Why might that be happening?

iii. Why might that be happening?

iv. Why might that be happening?

v. Why might that be happening?

vi. Why might that be happening?

Push as far as you can on each issue. Here’s a simple example:

You can then keep going through that line of thought to find the root cause (and opportunities).

7. As you get to the root causes in each cluster theme, you will often find commonalities across clusters. Look for similarities in the root cause. It’s crucial to understand how they link together – this is where the gold lies.

8. Summarise the root causes and key data elements that support them as an insight. Here’s a simple framework you can use:

Now that we recognise that ………..

There is an opportunity to …………

Here’s a simple example using our cold tea case:

Now that we recognise that My tea at the office was cold because I couldn’t take a china teacup filled with tea to my desk in the office without risking spilling it on my computer

There is an opportunity to Provide a china teacup with a lid on it so it won’t spill on computers or anywhere else

9. The next step is to focus! It’s important to prioritise these issues and opportunities by how important it is to address each one in your strategy.

Being close to the business, you may have blind spots when identifying root-cause issues; bringing in an objective external perspective can be valuable, but make sure you don’t let them dominate the content; remember, the people inside your business know it far better than any outsider.

In conclusion, taking the time to identify the root cause of issues and opportunities and embracing a curious, inquiring mind frame (perhaps channelling your inner detective) will lead to more innovative solutions that address deep rooted issues and opportunities for your business. These can be used to develop a strategy that drives profitable growth and sets you apart from the competition.

The business world constantly evolves, and companies must adapt to stay competitive. We need to work smarter and with a curiosity that helps us look beyond the obvious and go ‘below the surface’ to identify both potential ‘tripping ‘hazards, but also hidden opportunities (think gold mining!)

Digging deep and going beyond the symptoms of an issue creates an opportunity to identify quick wins. Delivering quick wins is a great way to boost morale and motivation. When employees see that their efforts are making a difference, they are more likely to stay engaged and productive.

Quick wins are great, but it’s essential to balance looking ahead (strategy) and focusing on the now (quick wins). Building quick wins into the strategy and not treating them as a random, ad hoc activity is a great way to win at every level.

Everyone wants to play for the winning team, and there’s nothing like the buzz created by a win – quick or not so quick; here are five reasons to LOVE a quick win from Intrafocus Academy – The Importance of Quick Wins.

1. Quick wins boost morale and momentum – Long-term goals can feel a long way off when stuck in the daily grind. When people think they contribute to a positive outcome and see the fruits of their labour, they are more likely to stay engaged.
2. Quick wins signal success to stakeholders – Stakeholders love to see evidence that a strategy is working and that the management team is sound.
3. Quick wins help to encourage talent into the business –Great employees are attracted to successful, thriving and positive organisations.
4.  Quick wins support a great culture- Build a thriving, buzzing culture with a regular cycle of quick wins – communicate the successes and celebrate them with the people in your business.
5. Quick wins build trust – When implementing a new strategy, especially one that requires significant change,  leaders must win the people’s confidence in their business. Sharing and celebrating quick wins together helps gain buy-in and builds trust.

We all want a quick win – how do we make them happen?

As mentioned earlier, the key to successfully delivering quick wins is to accurately identify where opportunities lie and then prioritise solutions to deliver the results. Sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees, so we need to get out our shovels, clear away the moss and fallen leaves to expose the root, and then trace down till we come to the source.

Once we arrive at the source and understand the root cause, we can get creative with solutions; sometimes, these will deliver a win quickly, and other times it’ll be a long-term gain. But either way – identifying the real cause of an issue will save time and money by not running around patching up symptoms. That sounds like a win to me!

Identify The Root Cause

There are various tools to help with the preliminary analysis when identifying root causes, including:

SWOT/TOWS

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

Gap Analysis

Compares the gap between the ideal state of how your business needs to operate to win in the marketplace and how you operate today.

VRIO

Value, Rarity, Imitability (ease/difficulty to imitate), Organisation (ability to exploit) –

assesses your organisation’s resources to ascertain its potential competitive advantage.

PESTEL

Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal.

Porter’s Five Competitive Forces

Competitive rivalry, supplier power, buyer power, substitution threat, new entry threat.

Focus On Prioritising Issues and Opportunities

Focus on identifying the priority issues and opportunities that will have the biggest impact on your success in the market. No organisation has the resources (money or people) to address every issue or opportunity, meaning that tough choices and clear decisions are required before jumping to solution mode.

This exercise must look at what’s in the best interests of the whole organisation, not just at a business unit or functional level. Remember that this is not a democracy where everyone gets a vote, or splitting things up evenly works. The focus needs to remain on addressing those things that will have the most significant impact on achieving your goals and gaining or maintaining a competitive advantage.

You don’t need to overcomplicate this analysis. If you have the right people in the room working together, the following simple prioritisation tool will show where the focus should be.

The ‘value versus difficulty prioritisation matrix’ adapts the Eisenhower Principle,

which helps prioritise by urgency and importance. The Eisenhower Principle matrix was developed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was in charge of the Allied Forces landing at Normandy on D-Day during the Second World War and who had to make some very tough decisions.

There is more detail on this prioritisation tool in our book, Strategisation. Essentially, it runs across two axis – the vertical axis shows ‘ Value to the business ‘ expressed in financial and non-financial terms; for example, brand strength, risk avoidance, and address a competitive threat. The horizontal axis shows ‘Ease/Capability/Capacity to implement successfully’, which includes your internal capability vs. competition, human resources, complexity and cost.

Use this framework to get everyone to give their perspective on each issue. It’s important to tease out similarities and differences across the group, make the tough choices and align on those issues and opportunities that will give your organisation a competitive advantage and help win in the marketplace. Use this as the basis for prioritisation, with the high-value and easy-to-address issues ranking highest. This isn’t about creating a wish list. Focus on what you can achieve over the period you need to prioritise resources.

This process will help identify quick wins, align the in your organisation, and expose any bottlenecks.

A bottleneck is a point in a process or system where the workflow is slowed down or blocked due to a constraint, such as a limited resource or an inefficient process. A classic example of a bottleneck from my executive life was managing each brand manager’s desire to launch new products constantly. An admirable character trait, but not so much fun for their research and development colleagues who had limited resources to devote to all these ‘ideas’! Additionally, we didn’t have the marketing budget required to drive awareness, trial and repeat. There were many opportunities and great ideas, but if we didn’t prioritise, nothing would ever launch effectively.

By identifying bottlenecks, you can focus on improving the areas of the process or system that have the greatest impact on overall performance, leading to significant improvements in efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

For example, if a particular process is consistently causing bottlenecks, you may need to consider redesigning the process or investing in additional resources to prevent future issues. In the example above, we subsequently reviewed our NPD process to better align with the business strategy, reduce the R&D bottlenecks and focus funding.

Clearing bottlenecks can also be regarded as a quick win when resources are freed up for other uses! In the case of NPD, it allowed us to get to market quicker and put more money behind bigger bets.

Working Smarter doesn’t have to be Complicataed.

Our method of decluttering our business differs slightly from Marie Condo but is just as straightforward and effective. You simply KISS your way through the jumble!

You can apply the KISS approach to various aspects of your business – anywhere you want to take a quick look at the current ‘usefulness’, will you give them the KISS of life or the KISS of death? For example, at Bicycles for Humanity, we knew we were wasting our limited volunteer resources on picking up bikes for recycling from individual households. We are giving that service the quick KISS of death and encouraging people to help us by making a trip to drop them off at our central local partners (rather than to the tip!).

KISS stands for

KEEP: Does it add value? Does it work?

IMPROVE: Can it add more value? Work more efficiently?

STOP: Has it stopped adding value? Does it no longer work? Does it stop us from doing something else?

START: What can we start doing to assist in delivering results? If it sounds simple, it’s coz it is!

Here too, you may discover some unexpected quick wins by identifying activities to STOP and being able to redirect resources into other, more lucrative areas/projects!

In conclusion, prioritising solutions with quick results is a crucial strategy for driving business success. By focusing on quick wins, businesses can boost morale, build momentum, and respond to changes in the market. A company must be strategic, willing to take risks, and led by individuals who value innovation and experimentation. By adopting these strategies, organisations can stay competitive in an ever-changing business world.

For more information or to buy our book visit our website www.strategisation.com.au

I came across an article the other day, ‘Thumbs up, given Thumbs down by Gen Z,’ and as someone who is not quite a boomer but still of a ‘mature’ vintage,  I began to wonder how often I have inadvertently and unintentionally offended Gen Zers.

My daughters (Gen Z’s) are quick to call my partner and me out when we slip up at home, but this idea of cancelling the thumbs-up spills over into the business area, and I’m keen to know how others feel about it. After all, we use a thumbs-up icon on Linkedin to demonstrate our approval – should it be changed to something else?

I’ve just read a fascinating book ‘The Culture Map’ by Erin Meyer, in which she explores and expands on the skills necessary to navigate the cultural differences in our increasingly globalised world (review on this website)

Cultural differences can cause miscommunication and misunderstanding in global business dealings, but so too, it would appear, can generational differences! I think there’s a book to be written here!

Link to article

I heard this old banger ‘Murder on the Dance floor’’ the other day, and it reminded me of the excellent metaphor that Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky coined in their book ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership.’

They say: ‘When on the dance floor, the observation may be very different from when on the balcony: when on the balcony, leaders take a step back and gain a clear view of what is really happening and can look at the bigger picture ‘.

As a leader, when developing the strategy for your business, you must spend time on the dance floor and the balcony.

Using ‘murder on the dancefloor ‘as an analogy: – the first step you need to take when solving the mystery (i.e., when developing your strategy ) is to interview all the witnesses (your stakeholders and your strategic population)— those on the dance floor (working at the coal face) and those on the balcony (management), will all have a different perspective, insight, views, and suggestions.

If you restrict your viewpoint to only management and exclude those at the coal face, you will set your strategy up for failure. Without everybody aligned, looking at the same picture, engaged and invested in taking action to implement it, you are assigning your strategy a one-way ticket to the morgue!

Working together, you will uncover the truth and get to the root cause of your business challenges and not waste time merely addressing the symptoms. In Strategisation, one of our golden rules is ‘Don’t develop your strategy in isolation from the key stakeholders you will rely on to implement it.’ aka ‘Interview key witnesses’ 🤣 🤣

In our book ‘Strategisation – The Art of Mobilising people to implement a winning strategy ‘, I reference the author and academic Richard Rumelt several times, as he is somewhat of a guru in my eyes when it comes to most things strategy related.

I just read the article ‘Why Bad Strategy is a Social Contagion’, which is a partial transcript from a podcast featuring Rumelt and McKinsey senior partner Yuval Atsmon; there were several points Rumelt makes that particularly resonated with me:

• Business leaders often misunderstand the actual meaning of strategy. Strategy is problem-solving. It is how you overcome the obstacles that stand between where you are and what you want to achieve.’
• Bad strategy is almost a literary form that uses PowerPoint slides to say, ‘Here is how we will look as a company in three years.’ That’s interesting, but it’s not a strategy.’

When it comes to getting the entire organisation involved in strategy development and execution, Rumelt says, ‘there are two types of errors made. One is where you don’t involve the front lines, and the other is where the front lines don’t understand the strategy ‘.
 
This point aligns with one of my key philosophies: to implement your strategy effectively, you MUST mobilise a critical mass of people within your organisation. I call this critical mass of people your ‘strategic population’, who should be involved in the development process as early as possible.

A strategic population is a group that can block the change required to implement the strategy if not engaged and mobilised; they are critical to breaking the current paradigm and allowing the change to happen. These are the people who will have a high impact on the success of your strategy. This population can be at any level and across any function in the organisation. The strategic population will change over time as you move from the status quo ‘as-is ‘ to the desired future state ‘to-be ‘.

Involve a broadly representative group from the strategic population in developing the strategy and its implementation: this is a crucial step in mobilising your troops. Consider this as mobilising your army for change.

These people can be instrumental in breaking paradigms while influencing others within the business. Assemble your platoon from across all levels of the organisation. Don’t just think about senior people or mid-level managers. Think right across the organisation. You may also need to include external parties such as suppliers, agencies, or distributors. Who can influence behaviours and thinking in a positive way across the organisation? Identify them and get them on board, pronto!

WORLD GLUE

In the attention economy, your brand has two seconds to get noticed. The wrong name can cost you. The right name will do the heavy lifting for you day after day after day.

– Louise Karch

Recommendation: HIGH

Key Comment:

Word Glue had me captivated from the opening page

‘Hi. Your brand name has two seconds to stick.

Time’s up.

Let’s go.’

The right brand name can be worth a fortune, and Word Glue gives you the stories, strategies and steps to generate brand names in 10 minutes or less.

Written in a short, concise format, this book provides a practical and easy-to-follow workbook that guides you through the process, with plenty of space to record your outputs.

The author, Louise Karch, is an award-winning marketer who has successfully named businesses, books, charities, colleges, radio shows, podcasts, products and even a church. Louise breaks Word Glue into 3 Parts:

* Pow! Naming Principles

* Pop! Naming Practices

* Pro Naming for Prosperity

In Part 1 (Pow!) Knowing & understanding the 7 principles of naming will ensure your brand breaks out, not blends in. I particularly like the concept of Principles 4, 6, and 7 – Sound Good, Name Bravely and Choose Wisely.

Part 2 (Pop!) explores the name-storming practices of breakout brands, including Rolex, JetBlue, iMac, Google, Starbucks, and Mcdonald’s, with excellent and relatable examples of the different tools used in each case.

By the time you arrive at Part 3 (Pro), if you have followed the process through Parts 1 and 2, you will have done all the leg work required and hopefully arrived at your final name choice. Louise insists that at this point, when seeking feedback, we should not ask, “Do you like this name?’, instead ‘Does this name grab your attention?”. After all, this matters most, it’s not a popularity contest but about capturing your customers’ attention!

I highly recommend Word Glue, even if you’re not a wordsmith.

This book is very accessible, full of great examples, and the process is quick.

Thanks, Louise – I’m a big fan!

Available directly from Louise’s website below

WORD GLUE

THE CULTURE MAP

Decoding how people think, lead, and get things done in business across cultures.

– Erin Meyer

Recommendation: HIGH

Key Comment:

I wish this book had been written 30 years ago when I worked in businesses in The UK, France and Spain. As a naïve young kiwi, it would have saved me a few red-faced moments (but robbed my partner of great moments of hilarity – at my expense!). The cultural nuances between Kiwis and Aussies get a mention: it turns out there are more differences than just jandals vs thongs and eskies vs chilly bins 😊 😊

Whether you work from a home office or abroad, business success in our increasingly globalised world requires the skills to navigate through cultural differences. I have experienced first-hand some of the pitfalls you can innocently stumble upon when working in a team comprised of people from various countries and cultures.

I delve into some of these in my book ‘Strategisation’.

Mobilising people to implement strategy successfully requires a leader to ensure that communication and dialogue are well understood, meaning that cultural differences must be addressed upfront. In Australia, 27% of the population is born overseas, and for many, English is a second language, so this doesn’t just apply to international business.

The Culture map is written by Erin Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, based in France, one of the world’s leading business schools. In this book, she demonstrates a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business.

What I found most helpful was the framework Erin provides, segmented into eight scales, each of which makes up the different elements that determine the culture of a business.

The eight elements are:

• Communicating:      Low context to high context
• Evaluating:            Direct negative feedback to indirect negative feedback
• Persuading:           Principles-first to Applications–first
• Leading:                Egalitarian to Hierarchical
• Deciding:               Consensual to Top-down
• Trusting:               Task-based to Relationship-based
• Disagreeing:          Confrontational to Avoid confrontation
• Scheduling:            Linear-time to Flexible-time

As you can imagine, in some cases, when these elements are graphed, the results show polar opposites. It’s no wonder that sometimes business dealings are doomed to fail before they even start if there is no conscious effort to address these potential barriers at the outset!

The book brings the cultures to life by using great examples from Erin’s many consulting and research activities worldwide. She illustrates how the differing cultures’ behaviours/ beliefs manifest, particularly in a work environment. In parallel with the book, there is a fantastic website where you can view and map various countries and their cultures across the eight scales.

‘The Culture Map’ doesn’t just offer a thought-provoking read and highlight the cultural idiosyncracies and differences; it includes easy-to-follow guidelines showing how to manage the challenges of working in multicultural teams.

This book is essential for anybody who works cross-culturally or is interested in what makes people from different countries tick. If you have to lead the implementation of a strategy and mobilise people from across cultures, it will make your job much easier.

Available from :

Booktopia

Amazon

“If you can’t measure it you can’t improve it.” – Peter Drucker.

If you don’t know how good your strategy is and which areas to focus on to make it better, how can you improve it and make it great?

Our free Strategisation self-diagnostic survey takes approximately 7 minutes to complete and asks you to rate your strategy against the following 4 critical success factors:

Strategic Theme: CONSISTENCY

Effective strategy must provide coherence to organisational action. A clear and explicit strategy can promote a climate of easily understood coordination and alignment across different departments. 

Strategic Theme: CONSONANCE

Effective strategy must both match and be adapted to its environment while at the same time allow the organisation to compete with other businesses. Therefore strategy needs to be evaluated at two levels; the basic scope or mission of the business and its competitive edge.

Strategic Theme: ADVANTAGE

Effective strategy must create competitive advantages that are relevant, enduring and difficult to duplicate. This focuses on how we can perform better than or instead of our rivals.

Strategic Theme: FEASIBILITY

The ability of the organisation to implement the strategy given the physical, human and financial constraints on the business and likely competitor response.

Once you have completed the survey we will send you a short report designed to help you identify areas of strength in your current strategy and highlight areas for improvement. (We don’t ask for any confidential material to be divulged).

Check here – Is your strategy good, bad, ugly or GREAT?

How important do you consider the mobilisation of the people in your organisation to be?
 
We consider it the most critical aspect of the entire change management process, which is why it sits at the heart of our strategisation model – pumping blood into the system and bringing your strategy to life!
 
If you fail to mobilise your people, i.e., you do not capture their hearts and minds from early in the development process, you have a 70% less chance of implementing your strategy successfully. No amount of CPR will revive it if people aren’t emotionally and intellectually engaged!

MOBILISE: The ongoing process of effectively engaging people to develop and implement the strategy

STRATEGY: The vision for the future, strategic elements, and high-level plans

CAPABILITY: The activities and competencies needed to implement the strategy effectively

PEOPLE: The culture, values, skills and organisational structure needed for people to implement the strategy effectively

PERFORMANCE: The measurement and systems to assess implementation effectiveness and support addressing issues and opportunities as they arise.