Diversity and Inclusion – What is Diversity and Inclusion?
“Diversity and inclusion exists when members of an organization act in a manner that recognizes and respects individual similarities and differences such that employees feel they and their work are valued and meaningfully contribute to the mission of the organization.”
StrategyDriven Contributors
StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 33 – Making Change Work: What are systems and how to they influence change?
StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.
Episode 33 – Making Change Work: What are systems and how to they influence change? explores what systems are and their importance to effectively managing any change. During our discussion, Sharon Drew Morgen, the New York Times bestselling author of Dirty Little Secrets
- what systems are and their role in the change management process
- the types of systems leaders can expect to deal with when making a change
- how systems go through the decision-making process to determine whether to except or reject a particular change
Additional Information
In addition to the invaluable insights Sharon Drew shares in Dirty Little Secrets
Making Change Work!
This podcast is the second in a series that teaches leaders how to make change work. Coming editions of the Making Change Work series will explore the steps to gaining the buy-in and committed effort needed to implement change successfully. We’ll cover topics including:
- The Problems of Change Management: bias and push
- If decisions are always rational, why are changees resisting?
- Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it?
- Putting it all together, a radical approach to change management: real leadership
Final Request…
The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider voting for us on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community. Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!
About the Author
Sharon Drew Morgen is a New York Times bestselling author and developer of a change management model based on buy-in that she’s written about in her latest book Dirty Little Secrets
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:50 — 52.0MB)
Do you understand your buyer’s buying journey well-enough to influence it?
Are your buyers buying differently now – and you have not changed the way you sell?
On September 20-22, the developer of the decision facilitation model Buying Facilitation® will be running a rare public training program in Boston to teach you how to help buyers buy.
Sharon Drew Morgen, author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity
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Sales only manages the needs assessment and solution placement end of the buying decision. But buyers have work to do before they can make a purchase: they must handle the political, rules/relationship issues that go on behind-the-scenes to get buy-in. And selling – even with the best technology and data – doesn’t go behind-the-scenes.
Buying Facilitation® is based on systems thinking and how change happens. It details, and helps influence, the buying/buy-in decision journey.
This is a rare opportunity to study directly with Sharon Drew. This program is for sales folks, change agents, and consultants.
Join Sharon Drew for 3 days on Monday – Wednesday, September 20-22, to discover:
- how change happens – within the buyer’s environment;
- how decisions get made – to buy, to implement a change;
- how to formulate Facilitative Questions, use decision sequences for decision making, and help internal systems buy-in to a purchase quickly;
- how to prospect, close, avoid objections and become part of the Buying Decision Team on the first call.
To register, http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/3day_bft.php
Syllabus: http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/ebooks/bft_3days.pdf
To contact Sharon Drew Morgen with questions about the program or the outcomes, contact: sdm@austin.rr.com.
About Sharon Drew Morgen
Sharon Drew Morgen is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the change management model that navigates through the decision making process. She’s written 7 books and over 1000 articles on this material. Her clients consistently achieve a 400-600% increase in revenue. Learn more about Sharon Drew Morgen and Buying Facilitation® at: www.sharondrewmorgen.com.
Is Strategic Planning Still Relevant?
In March 2010, Fast Company ran a piece entitled “Strategic Planning is Dead, Long Live Strategy Execution,” a few weeks earlier the Wall Street Journal declared that “Strategic Plans Lose Favor.” So is strategic planning another victim of the economic tsunami that has washed over the world?
It is easy to jump on the bandwagon and declare that in today’s volatile and uncertain world strategic planning is irrelevant. Amidst all the talk of flexibility, agility, speed and responsiveness, strategic planning seems oddly out of place. After all how useful can a long-term view of future be when our predictive ability is so poor?
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However, before we discard strategy lets back up, maybe the problem is not strategic planning itself but the way in which we apply the technique. As Michael Porter author of numerous books that are essentials in the library of any strategic planner commented: “Strategy is a word that gets used in so many ways with so many meanings that it can end up being meaningless.”
Porter is right. The whole subject of strategy has become too confusing. It seems that everything is strategic; otherwise, it is not really that important. We have become overwhelmed with strategic plans, strategic vision, strategic thinking, strategic insight, strategic management, strategic information, strategic marketing, strategic branding, strategic positioning, and even strategic bombing. Appending strategy or strategic to anything elevates its significance and that of anyone associated with it. “Oh, I’m working on a strategic project,” marks you as a very important person who is going places. Frankly we have lost the plot. Today you can define strategy just about any way you like, and that is a large part of the problem. Here are just a few definitions ranging from the confusing to the merely stupid:
- Strategy bridges the gap between policy and tactics.
- Strategy is the means by which policy is implemented.
- Strategy is the art of distributing and applying resources to fulfill the ends of policy.
- Strategy answers the question: What should the organization be doing?
- Strategy is a plan, a “how,” a means of getting from here to there.
- Strategy is a pattern in actions over time
- Strategy is position; strategy is perspective.
- Strategy emerges over time as intentions collide with and accommodate a changing reality.
However, none of these make my top three listing of the most absurd definitions of strategy. In best beauty pageant form, here they are in reverse order, with my comments in italics:
- “Strategy has no existence apart from the ends sought.” I love this one as it reminds me of late-night, alcohol-infused philosophical discussions while in college on the meaning of life or the real message behind Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
- “Strategy is a broad, ambiguous topic. We must all come to our own understanding, definition, and meaning.” Well, that clears things up doesn’t it?
- “Strategy is what top management does that is of great importance to the organization.” Ah, so that is what they do!
Clearly, there is no clarity! Yet strategic planning should be both important and valuable provided it is kept in perspective—strategies are not five-year budgets, obscure aspirational statements that have little grounding in reality, or excuses for each new management team to put its own stamp on an organization. Done right, strategy lays out a direction and focus that guides an organization’s actions. Instead of handicapping management in times of uncertainty, strategy provides a foundation for fast, confident decision-making.
Keeping strategy simple makes it very easy to ask basic questions as ideas, opportunities, or events arise that impact an organization such as: How should we respond to these unforeseen events? What are the implications? At U.S. retailer Target, the question is always, “How does this decision reinforce the brand?” Effective strategies work in both good and bad times. Warren Buffet’s investing strategy has barely changed in fifty years through all manner of economic cycles.
The truth is that very few organizations or managers are truly strategic. When push comes to shove, strategic thinking flies out of the window as the pressure to make budget or hit the quarterly numbers takes over and anything that does not directly contribute to making near-term goals gets ignored. During 2008, billions of dollars worth of strategic plans were tossed out the window. It is interesting that Apple did not abandon its strategy of creating beautiful and innovative products, IBM did not toss its “Smarter Planet” strategy out of the window, and BMW gained share from its luxury rivals even as industry-wide sales slumped.
Unfortunately, for many organizations strategy has many similarities to the excessively complex financial instruments (think—credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations) that were at the heart of the credit crunch. We need to get back to basics: with strategy, if you don’t understand it, you can’t execute it; with a financial instrument, if you don’t understand it, don’t invest in it. Simplicity is key. I like the way General Electric described growth strategies in its 2003 Annual Report, “The best growth strategies take companies to places where only a few can follow.” I understand that, and it provides a test I can apply to any strategy: will it create distance between our competitors and us?
A GE alumnus offered some of the best advice on strategy. Larry Bossidy was Jack Welch’s number two at GE for many years before becoming Chairman and CEO of AlliedSignal and then Honeywell. I had the pleasure of working with him early in his tenure at AlliedSignal during the early 1990s, and his candor and clarity left you in no doubt what he was thinking. In the 2002 book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
I like that; it’s simple and readily understandable. You have a destination in mind, and you’ve worked out a rough direction or route for getting there, but you haven’t necessarily planned out every restroom break or constrained yourself to a single road. You have options to take alternative routes if needed and maybe even change the ultimate destination based upon events along the way.
Building upon this I would add one further dimension—speed. How fast do you want to get there? Strategies that clearly describe a direction, a destination, and a speed provide a solid foundation for planning. For example, the command, “Go west young man,” offers information as to direction but provides little guidance for planning. If I am sitting in New York, will getting to Pittsburgh be good enough, or do I need to go all the way to San Francisco?
If the destination is defined as San Francisco, you now have more information to start building a plan to get there, but you still have a lot of choices—walk, ride a Harley, cruise in a Corvette, or fly on the Learjet. If speed is added to the equation in the form of “head west to San Francisco and try to get there in less than 24 hours,” planning just got a whole lot easier. You can eliminate walking, riding your motorcycle, driving, or catching the train as options since none of these tactics will get you there in time.
Strategic planning is not dead; we just need to get to the basics. In today’s uncertain world remember three key points:
- Strategies increase flexibility, rather than reducing it.
- Good strategy simplifies planning by taking certain options off the table. Often the most valuable section in a strategy is the one headed: “Things we will not do.” Interestingly, it is often the one section in voluminous strategy documents that is missing.
- The ultimate test of a good strategy is that it remains relevant in bad times as well as good. That’s why Apple, Johnson & Johnson, WalMart, Tesco and Berkshire Hathaway consistently outperform their rivals.
This article is adapted from David Axson’s recently published book The Management Mythbuster
About the Author
David Axson, author of The Management Mythbuster
StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 42b – An Interview with Geoff Loftus, author of Lead Like Ike, part 2 of 2
StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.
Special Edition 42b – An Interview with Geoff Loftus, author of Lead Like Ike, part 2 of 2 explores the leadership lessons of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American CEO of D-Day, and how by applying these lessons, business professionals can achieve far greater success in today’s challenging and rapidly evolving business world. During our discussion, Geoff Loftus, author of Lead Like Ike: Ten Business Strategies from the CEO of D-Day
- the most important business strategy taught by the CEO of D-Day
- why an Eisenhower-like leader could rise and thrive in today’s fast-paced business world
Additional Information
In addition to the invaluable insights Geoff shares in Lead Like Ike
Final Request…
The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider voting for us on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community. Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!
About the Author
Geoff Loftus is author of Lead Like Ike
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:53 — 32.8MB)
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