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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
- 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)
- Grasping Essentials When You’re NOT the Expert
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
Tag Archives: collaboration
The Real Reason Strategy Implementation is Difficult (and the Solution to It)
There are two people-related problems that cause poor strategy execution: stakeholders lack a mutual understanding of the nature of the situation & the organization’s social and emotional environment is not supportive for individuals to step outside of their comfort zone. To overcome, use the concepts of dialogue and deliberation, following the analogy of jury duty. An effective jury reaches consensus. Similarly, and effective strategy is one that reaches consensus; that is, people agree to support the implementation. Continue reading
Three Tips for Leading Strategic Alliances
Strategic alliances are a growing subset of strategic initiatives. A Strategic Alliance is a relationship between two or more parties where they collaborate to capture an opportunity or extend their reach into complementary areas. Author and consultant Greg Githens has participated in many strategic alliances, both as a leader and as a consultant and offers three tips that will increase the probability of success. Tip #1 – Meet in Person, Frequently. Tip #2 – Find and Articulate Strategic Insights. Tip #3 – Explicitly discuss risks, risk tolerances and risk response strategies. Continue reading
Posted in Program & Portfolio Management, Success Principles for Strategic Initiatives, Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged Best Buy, collaboration, Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Leadership, Mergers and acquisitions, risk management, Samsung, Strategic alliance, Strategic initiative, strategic thinking
1 Comment
How to Energize Strategic Initiatives with Outcomes
Performance outcomes are time-based trends that serve to crystallize the strategic vision. This “how to execute strategy article” explains that the strategic initiative team builds a cause-effect model. Applying its model, the team develops the strategies that lead to the desired improvement in performance outcomes. Helpful tips are provided. Continue reading
Posted in Interpreting Strategy Documents, Strategy Coaching and Facilitation, Success Principles for Strategic Initiatives, Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged ambiguity, change management, collaboration, Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Decision making, Greg Githens, innovation, Management, management tools, program management, questions, revpar, stkeholder expectations, Strategic initiative, Strategic management, strategy execution, success metric, teams, transformation, vision
12 Comments
Interpreting Strategy Documents: More Insights and a Valuable Tip!
The article provides techniques and questions for clarifying the internal and the external strategic context during a strategy implementation readiness session. This helps you align formulation with implementation. Continue reading
Posted in Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged ambiguity, Business, collaboration, Consulting, Document, Management, Peter Drucker, program management, Silicon Valley, Strategic management, Strategic Planning Issues for Strategic Initiatives, strategy execution, strategy formulation, teams
4 Comments
How to Use the “What About” Technique
Explains practices for managing issues and overcoming ambiguity: “what about,” nominal group technique, RADIO classification scheme. Continue reading
How to Socialize a Vision? Choose From These Five Tactics
A practical tool for working with people to develop and adopt a shared vision for a strategic initiative program. The approaches are telling,selling, testing, consulting, and co-creating. Continue reading
Good Meetings are Essential for Good Strategy
Practical tips for strategy meetings. The most important purpose of a meeting is making decisions. Continue reading
Leading Strategic Initiatives 