-
Join 735 other subscribers
Greg Githens is the author of How to Think Strategically (2019). He is a recognized thought leader in designing and delivering strategic initiatives.-
Read these recent articles
- Unlocking Strategic Thinking for Business Success – A Summit for Leaders and High Performers (Free)
- The Skills Stack for Resilience
- Five tips for speaking truth to power
- Better Conversations Generate Better Strategy
- Insights Are the Secret Sauce of Strategy
- How a Strategic Decision Differs From a Tactical Decision
- Unlearning, learning, and a culture of strategic thinking
- How Mapping Can Improve Your Strategic Thinking
- How to Measure Business Acumen
- Strategy Execution as a Learning Process
- Why I favor a mental stance of disorder
- Critical Asking
- Transcending the Status Quo
- Connecting Strategy to Execution
- Complexity: Four Principles for Program Managers
- Use the PAVER Framework to Assure Strategic Commitments
- Strategic Experiments & Agile Responses
- Avoiding Four Pitfalls of Rapid Growth
- Operational Excellence or Strategic Excellence?
- Design Thinking: Five Landmarks for Strategic Initiatives
- Seven Must-Do’s for Better Strategy Execution
- Strategy as Problem Solving: An Example from a Large Technology Organization.
- Five Mental Anchors that Impede Your Strategic Initiative
- Five Must-Know Patterns of Disruption
- Beginners Guide: Competent Strategic Initiatives
- Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, & Ambiguity (VUCA)
- Four Recommendations for Effective Program Governance
- Six Strategic Thinking Skills: Developing the Proactiveness Habit
- What’s the #Strategy? Let Me Tell You a #Story
- Benefits of Being a Visible Expert
- Strategy is Not Long-Range Planning, Vision, Mission, or Values
- Five Ways to Involve Smart New Voices in the Strategy & Agile Innovation Conversation
- Is it Possible to Have a Perfect Strategy?
- Facilitating the Business Model Canvas: A Few Lessons Learned (Part 1)
- Designing Strategic Initiatives for Results: The Two Kinds of Coherence
- Perspective is More Powerful than Vision
- The Real Reason Strategy Implementation is Difficult (and the Solution to It)
Talk to the Expert
Need a strategic planning facilitator, implementation coach, neutral mediator, workshop, seminar, or hands-on program manager? Greg Githens provides coaching, workshops, hands-on, and more. Contact him at GregoryDGithens@cs.com or 419.424.1164Categories
- Ambiguity and Strong-Minded Thinking
- Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders
- Examples of Strategic Initiatives
- How to Improve Your Story Telling Chops
- Incremental Benefits Delivery
- Interpreting Strategy Documents
- Program & Portfolio Management
- Strategic Planning Issues for Strategic Initiatives
- Strategy
- Strategy Coaching and Facilitation
- Strategy, Ambiguity, and Strong-Minded Thinking
- Success Principles for Strategic Initiatives
- Transforming the Organization
- Uncategorized
- Useful Practices & Management Tools
Author Archives: Greg Githens
Seven Must-Do’s for Better Strategy Execution
A 2005 survey identified seven factors necessary to close the strategy-to-performance gap and those factors are valid for strategic initiatives launched in the present day. The survey 197 senior executives at companies with sales of at least $500 million. You can … Continue reading
Strategy as Problem Solving: An Example from a Large Technology Organization.
A case study from MajFin shows how to think about causal links needed to deliver value. Continue reading
Five Mental Anchors that Impede Your Strategic Initiative
Mental anchors are reference points that people use in decision making. As an example, people tend to be loss avoiders when making decisions because they are anchoring to the things they already have. Anchoring to the past or present allows … Continue reading
Five Must-Know Patterns of Disruption
Strategic initiatives are game-changing programs, thus either defend against or create disruption. Five patterns: 1. You’re either an incumbent or a disruptor. 2. Incumbents are disrupted when their attention is elsewhere. 3. Disruptive innovators have open minds and open objectives. 4. A disruption life cycle exists. 5. The strategic initiative leader and team have important responsibilities.
http://wp.me/pZCkk-11K Continue reading
Posted in Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged change the business, disruptive thinking
1 Comment
Beginners Guide: Competent Strategic Initiatives
Do you want to become more competent in the arts of strategic initiative leadership? This article explains the acquisition of competency as a learning journey, with the key point being acquiring “reflective competency.” Because strategic initiatives involve many areas of knowledge, the author suggests starting with a few fundamentals and expanding the base of knowledge and “knowledge in action.” http://wp.me/pZCkk-11A Continue reading
Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, & Ambiguity (VUCA)
Greg explains how to resolve volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity for a strategic initiative. He also provides a critique of the so-called VUCA prime model (vision, understanding, clarity, & agility) concluding that the VUCA prime model is only 25% valid.
http://wp.me/pZCkk-11q Continue reading
Four Recommendations for Effective Program Governance
This article discusses good design of program governance, tailored to the special case of strategic initiatives. It identifies three common mistakes, and then four recommendations. The recommendations are: 1) People respect what you inspect, 2) Allow for mistakes, 3) You want to selectively impose policy, and 4) Design so that the organization is concentrating on the decisive aspects of the strategy. The article concludes with few remarks on striking a balance between conflicting needs such as strategy and risk management.
http://wp.me/pZCkk-11e Continue reading
Six Strategic Thinking Skills: Developing the Proactiveness Habit
Few argue that culture is a key factor in the execution of strategy. Culture has many definitions, and one way to understand it is that it is a set of thousands of individual habitual responses. They are also collective, and … Continue reading
What’s the #Strategy? Let Me Tell You a #Story
Advice for story telling in the leadership of a strategic initiative. The heroic narrative is the invention of a new condition. The romantic narrative is a return to a purer self. Examples from IBM and Domino’s Pizza. http://wp.me/pZCkk-10R Continue reading
Benefits of Being a Visible Expert
In earlier articles, I’ve explained that a strategic initiative is a kind of program that is amenable to the tools of program management. (However, not all programs are strategic initiatives.) One of the most important functions of programs is to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Leading Strategic Initiatives 