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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
- 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
- Agile Thinking, Habits, and Strategic Initiative Leadership: Transcending the Buzz for Useful Insights
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
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- Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tag Archives: New product development
Use Small Wins to Attract Allies To Your Strategic Initiative (and Overcome Shabby Thinking)
Organizations often use strategic initiatives as a tool for improving operations. The success rate for these process-improvement initiatives is about 1 in 3. I find it best to think of tool and process deployment as a social process of adopting an innovation. The bottoms-up approach of small wins is a useful alternative to autocratic approaches. A small win, defined by Karl Weick, is a “series of concrete, complete outcomes of moderate importance that build a pattern that attracts allies and deters opponents.” An example is provided, with the leadership lessons of defining benefits, being authentic, generating trust, and encouraging experimentation.
The word “opponent” is a bit of an overstatement for most internal change efforts.The opponent is often not a person, it is a ill-defined ideology. Recommendations: Base your conclusions on good evidence, not gut feelings. Don’t let half-truths go unchallenged; over time they become accepted truth. Continue reading
Posted in Strategy, Ambiguity, and Strong-Minded Thinking, Success Principles for Strategic Initiatives, Transforming the Organization, Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged buy in, commitment, Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, New product development, Strategic management, strategy execution, transformation
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Strategic Initiatives | What Are the Metrics That Matter?
Leaders of strategic initiatives should regard good metrics as a priority. Metrics will help foster learning, support the strategic initiative story, integrate the many components, and encourage good decision making. People can only pay attention to a handful of things, so the question for any change agent is what metrics are preserved and what new metrics are needed to encourage people to move in new directions. A good metric – or set of metrics – does these six things:1. It measures something important. 2.It has relevance to the audience. 3. It measures something that is directly controllable by individuals or small groups. 4.It is resistant to gaming. 5. It is a member of a very small, lean set of measurements. 6. The set of metrics includes both leading and lagging indicators.
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Strategic Initiative Case Study: Intel’s Product Development Turnaround
Organizations need to mature new product development processes, product life cycle processes, and other processes. The article describes Intel and its product development framework. The first case study failed to deliver benefits, in part because the team tried to make the organization comply and conform to a model. It requires skill to navigate and change culture. The second case was successful, in part because the CEO made it clear he was unhappy with product quality. The article lists numerous lessons learned for strategic initiatives. Continue reading
Growth as a Strategic Initiative
Companies are shifting into a growth mode and we will see more strategic initiatives that emphasize a blend of incremental, platform and radical transformation. The drivers of growth may be strategy innovation, product innovation, or process innovation. It may be organic or inorganic growth, with use of open innovation straddling the two. The leader will need to develop an understanding of what growth means, and apply the described techniques for structuring a strategic initiative to gain growth. Continue reading
Posted in Examples of Strategic Initiatives, Interpreting Strategy Documents, Strategic Planning Issues for Strategic Initiatives, Transforming the Organization
Tagged ambiguity, Business, business development, Chief executive officer, GE Growth Playbook, Greg Githens, growth, IBM, incremental innovation, innovation, Inorganic growth, New product development, new service developement, open innovation, platform innovation, Procter & Gamble, program management, radical innovation, Sales, Samuel J. Palmisano, Strategic initiative, Strategy, strategy innovation, transformation
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Strategic Initiatives Case Study – Domino’s Pizza Turnaround
Provides detail on Domino’s Pizza turnaround strategic initiative, with 7 leadership lessons. Continue reading
