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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: questions
Grasping Essentials When You’re NOT the Expert
What can a person do when he needs to quickly grasp essential knowledge and there is little opportunity to delegate the decision to an expert? This article provides you learn a technique for improving the effectiveness of your learning of specialist knowledge. I discovered a solution that finds a middle ground between formalized textbook-style learning and muddling through. This approach, works by asking focus questions and constructing propositions. The result is a hierarchical concept maps that renders a scaffold of relevant knowledge.I heartily endorse concept maps as a useful tool and hope you will practice and build skill. They are deceptively simple when you see a good one that has been developed by someone else. I encourage you to persist.
Achieve, Preserve, Avoid: Another Nifty Technique for Gaining Strategic Perspective
Strategy is inherently ambiguous, with goals and expectations differing depending upon the stakeholder. Because people tend to feel uncomfortable with ambiguity, a leader needs to clear the fog; a process that is best called gaining perspective. Before the leader can help others, s/he needs to clarify their her/his own view of the rewards and the risks. This article identifies three useful questions for gaining perspective: What do I want to achieve? What do I want to preserve? What do I want to avoid? First answer this for the individual, then for the group. The article provides an example of its application by a newly promoted vice president sponsoring improvements to new product development productivity.
http://wp.me/pZCkk-XP Continue reading
Don’t Ask About Deadlines and Due Dates
Don’t ask about dead lines, instead the strategic initiative leader should probe for timing expectations and the sense of urgency held by his/her stakeholders. Continue reading
A Master List of Questions for Strategic Initiatives
More than 80 good questions for leaders of strategic initiatives, provided by Greg Githens, who notes that “leaders lead by asking questions.” These questions are categorized: strategic path finding; betterment of risk, issues, and decisions; and elaborating requirements, solution design, and value propositions. Continue reading
Posted in Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged ambiguity, Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Decision making, leading strategic initiatives, questions, strategic initiatives, Strategic Planning Issues for Strategic Initiatives, strategic thinking
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Use the Columbo Question to Get Strategic Information
In the inquiry mode of leadership, questions help to set strategic direction and discover requirements and intentions. Greg Githens explains that the last question in an interview is, “Is there any question that I should have asked that I haven’t asked.” Continue reading
Posted in Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged Columbo, Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Greg Githens, Interview, management tools, Peter Falk, questions, skillful questioning, strategic information, Strategic initiative, strategic thinking, The Last Question
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A Practical Tool for Gaining Program Management Insights
Greg Githens describes the SIMple model (SIM = Strategy, Inquiry, Metrics) as a tool for framing key issues in a strategic initiative. He recommends starting with inquiry and metrics, and using that to evaluate and refine the program strategy. Continue reading
Posted in Program & Portfolio Management, Success Principles for Strategic Initiatives, Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged Business, Chief learning officer, Decision making, Greg Githens, inquiry, Management, measurement, metrics, program management, questions, Strategic initiative, Strategic management, strategic thinking, Strategy
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Does Your Strategic Initiative Need a Fresh Perspective?
Greg explains how to overcome headwinds in a strategic initiative with 4 perspectives: storytelling, learning, integration, and decisions. He illustrates how each role is applied through a case study.
Posted in Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Examples of Strategic Initiatives, Strategy Coaching and Facilitation, Useful Practices & Management Tools
Tagged ambiguity, chief decision architect, chief integration officer, Chief learning officer, Chief storyteller, Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Decision making, Greg Githens, intuition, Issue management, Learning, management tools, partitioning problems, program management, questions, Strategic initiative, Strategic management, strategic thinking, strategy execution, teams, transformation, vision
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Strategic Thinking (Part 2): Framing Decisions with the Four Types of Ambiguity
Good strategic thinkers are strong minded; they cope effectively with ambiguous information. This article explains how to recognize the four types of goal ambiguity (methods, metrics, priorities, and outcomes). The strategic initiative leader needs to frame decisions to cope with this ambiguity. Continue reading
Posted in Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Strategy, Ambiguity, and Strong-Minded Thinking
Tagged agile, ambiguity, Business, buy in, Competencies of Strategic Initiative Leaders, Consulting, Decision making, Greg Githens, Initiativeto strong mind, Management, questions, Strategic initiative, Strategic management, Strategic planning, Strategic Planning Issues for Strategic Initiatives, strategic thinking, strong minded
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Leading Strategic Initiatives 