All Posts Tagged With: "strategy development"
Identifying Potential Blind Spots
As your organization plans for the future, how do you identify potential blind spots? It’s a Baldrige question that high-performing organizations typically answer with comprehensive approaches to finding, collecting, and analyzing information about their industries.
If you do this, you’re in good shape because you know the road that lies before you, the twists and turns, the hills to climb and the straightaways. You can proceed confidently toward your destination—unless a boulder blindsides you.
That boulder rolled out of a blind spot. It’s impossible to anticipate, but organizations can do a better job of recognizing when they are in boulder territory. In “Six Ways to Prevent Corporate Tunnel Vision,” Adrian Ott lists six questions you can ask to uncover hidden risks and opportunities. (Fast Company, April 5, 2010)
Can a competitor with a new business model explode the economics of your industry? The incumbent business model can feel like the way things are done until a better model blows it up.
Do you evaluate the same competitors now as you did three years ago? Companies are expanding into new markets—and those markets may include yours.
Can your category be simplified? Companies like Southwest and Costco have succeeded b simplifying what they offer.
How well do you evaluate the broader customer context independent of your products? Evaluate your customers from a 360 degree view including sequential tasks and simultaneous activity.
Do you regularly seek the next wave of technology or methods to serve customers, even when they will make your current products obsolete? Think Blockbuster and Netflix.
Do you have the same channel partner portfolio…
9Apr2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedPlanning for the Longer-Term
In thinking about how your organization develops its strategy, the Baldrige Criteria raise two issues that are often get less attention than they deserve: (1) the information and data you collect, analyze, and report that informs your priorities and decisions and (2) the longer-term planning horizon and related performance projections.
Futurist Jamais Cascio addresses these two issues in a process he described in “Futures Thinking: The Basics,” for Fast Company (September 17, 2009). His process has five steps:
- Asking the Question. “The exploration into different possible futures comes from a narrow concern,” writes Cascio. He recommends asking strategic questions in terms of dilemmas, not problems, because you will come up with different possible responses, which you can evaluate and choose as circumstances change, rather than searching for one perfect solution. Pick a longer-term time horizon that is relevant for your organization such as after planned regulations take effect, when resource availability or pricing will change, when a demographic shift occurs (such as Baby Boomers retiring), or when there is a change in political leadership. Reconsider your question throughout the process by asking if it is still the right question.
- Scanning the World. Baldrige asks how you consider your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; early indications of major shifts in technology, markets, products, customer preferences, competition, or the regulatory environment; long-term organizational sustainability; and your ability to execute the strategic plan. Organizations need systematic processes for collecting, analyzing, communicating, and evaluating this information during their strategic planning processes. Cascio suggests bringing new perspectives and viewpoints into the…
