Strategy means something different to every organization - Regardless of your industry, strategy should not be overlooked. Each month, I compile my favourites from recent strategy news, blogs, and studies. Here are some of the most current pieces to help you gain insight into the world of strategy.
This article addresses the common oversights that organizations make when addressing their five year strategic plan. Although regular strategic planning is crucial for success, it’s also important to understand a long term vision and be able to adapt to changes that may arise within the five year plan - for example: technology shifts and market changes. This piece also addresses that every five years may not be often enough for some companies. Technology companies, for example, may have rapidly shifting user bases , software, new inventions, and more. These companies may want to consider revisiting their plan every two years, or even every twelve months.
This article looks at how leaders and their teams can support their strategic goals by incorporating mindfulness into their lives. This practice can help you and your team with more thoughtful and deliberate speaking and decision making. Steve Jobs is an advocate for mindfulness in the workplace: “An insightful reframing of a competitive situation can create whole new patterns of advantage and weakness. The most powerful strategies arise from such game-changing insights.”
To expand on this, HBR explains how you can introduce these techniques into your workplace, thus helping your team peacefully reach strategic goals.
Businesses, both large and small, understand that geopolitical events can and will affect their companies. However, most organizations are not taking steps to address this. Alongside this issue, businesses understand that rapid changes in technology can add to this possible instability.
“This year’s results suggest an even more fundamental shift in the way executives and their companies view globalization. Over the next five years, nearly all respondents expect a disruption in the global economy due to volatility. And they are much likelier now—43 percent, up from 29 percent in 2013—to expect that potential disruptions to the economy will be very severe. This is a greater share even than those who expected very severe disruptions in 2010, in the wake of the global financial crisis.”
This in depth report shows stats and information that can help your company get ahead of the game and take action against the possible risks and pitfalls of globalization, technology, and market instability.
Xiaomi has released a new drone that will be remarkably less expensive than its competition. Xiaomi is known in China for creating “Good Enough” electronics and then selling them online for much less than other options. This article discusses how Xiamoi’s strategy may not help them in the long run. Even if they sell a lot of drones initially and introduce them to the every day consumer, new companies will enter the market, and perhaps offer even lower prices.
Even small businesses require a good strategic plan. Especially in regards to fast changing technologies. Many smaller companies opt out of new technology, such as cloud computing and other fairly new trends. By embracing new technologies, smaller organizations could see an increase in productivity, connectivity and revenue.
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