3, 2, 1… StrategyDriven Podcast Coming Tuesday, November 27

Less than three days remain until the StrategyDriven Podcast launch! In our first episode, Nathan and Howard explore the question: “What makes an organization strategy driven?”

The StrategyDriven Podcast series elaborates on the best practice and warning flag postings on the StrategyDriven website; offering rich examples and additional insights. We believe this podcast series offers tremendous value for executives and managers at all levels of the organization.

The StrategyDriven Podcast will be available for download to your favorite mp3 service, such as iTunes, Yahoo! Podcasts, PodcastAlley, and BluBrry, or can be listened to directly from the StrategyDriven website. Why not schedule time today to subscribe to the StrategyDriven Podcast on Tuesday, November 27?!

Strategic Planning Whitepaper Introduction – Analysis

StrategyDriven contributors are pleased to introduce the strategic planning whitepaper: Analysis. This whitepaper outlines and describes the major steps taken to assess the organization’s internal performance and external environment in support of long range activity planning.

Strategic analysis is a critical component of the strategic planning process. An integral part of a company’s evaluation and control program, it provides executives and managers with a comprehensive assessment of the organization’s capabilities and market factors; revealing growth opportunities and vulnerabilities. Armed with this information, managers can more effectively chose from among today’s strategic alternatives to create the greatest future reward potential.

New Model Release – Opportunity & Problem Statement Development Model

StrategyDriven contributors are pleased to announce the release of our seventh model: Opportunity & Problem Statement Development model. This model compliments StrategyDriven‘s decision-making best practices Identify the Target and Multidiscipline Teams by illustrating the often complex, multifaceted nature of organizational opportunities and challenges and how cross-functional teams are needed to ensure full understanding and appropriate response is taken to maximize benefits or minimize losses.

New Model Release – Decision-Making Base Model

StrategyDriven contributors are pleased to announce the release of our fourth model, the Decision-Making Base Model. This model illustrates the concepts of uncertainty and risk associated with hurdle and window decisions. (Hurdle decisions seek outcomes above a defined threshold while window decisions seek outcomes between an upper and lower threshold.) Additionally, the model provides the foundation from which later posts and models will explore how various actions impact a decision’s uncertainty and therefore its risk and the probability of achieving desirable outcomes.

New Discussion Viewpoint – Warning Flags

To succeed, it is often not good enough to have the best talent, the latest technology, and the most efficient processes. In many instances, the difference between organizations performing exceptionally and those that are merely good is the ability to avoid performance pitfalls.

To date, the StrategyDriven website has been focused on those best practices that successful organizations employ to achieve sustained, exceptional results. Going forward, StrategyDriven contributors will offer performance insights in a new type of discussion posting, Warning Flags.

Warning flags represent those activities or performance attributes that diminish an organization’s effectiveness. By their very nature, warning flag behaviors are active not passive. They represent individual or organizational behaviors that diminish the organization’s overall ability to create value. Because warning flags are behavior based, they can be readily observed, recognized, and corrected or eliminated.

Warning flags are not simply the absence of best practice performance. While this may be the case in some instances, the omission of a best practice often only results in an organization foregoing that practice’s benefits. Warning flags always represent behaviors that are destructive to organizational performance, not the absence of performance enhancing practices.

We hope you find these new warning flag postings to be of great value in your pursuit of organizational excellence and look forward to receiving your comments and feedback.