An organization cannot afford an unsuccessful offsite. Strategic offsites are often more important than regular managerial meetings for a number of reasons. For example:Offsites are one of the few instances when all leadership members are present in one place to explore strategic issues in depth [...]
We are still in the first quarter of this year and your company, probably like a majority of other companies, may have chalked out its goals for the year ahead and might even have a strong strategy in place to go after these goals. This strategy hopefully acts like the gears of change that propel [...]
$900 billion to $1.3 trillion – that’s the estimated annual value McKinsey & Company assigns to emerging social technologies. To compete in the social economy organizations must rapidly integrate, adapt to, and learn from new social platforms. Social technology is here and it is [...]
The Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu understood something about war that is frequently forgotten by those who have never waged it. If a military leader understood the battlefield, his enemy’s thinking, and the limits of his own resources, he would rarely lose. While business is a much less [...]
Top down strategy is dead, but executives still have to lead, and they do so by setting forth strategic plans. Those strategic plans help guide how even the most complex companies behave. Strategy will always matter most, but in the digital era, where we have unprecedented levels of communication [...]
Most executives I speak with intuitively understand the value of leveraging “social” business solutions rather than taking a top down strategy. Companies that leverage these solutions are redefining the marketplace. Success is all about breaking down bureaucratic hierarchies, doing a few things [...]
Our world is dominated by data. Ones and zeros are the lifeblood of business. To succeed in business, companies must focus on finding value in data. A 2011 McKinsey study concluded that “five new kinds of value might come from abundant data:creating transparency in organizational activities [...]
9Lenses users are riding the social wave! Friends, I have great news. The 9Lenses team just received word that you are not merely ahead of the curve, you are the curve! According to IBM’s recent study of 1700 CEOs entitled, “Leading Through Connections,” successful CEO’s are a force of [...]
Companies spend billions of dollars mining data, looking for a competitive edge, and hoping to find value in all the 1s and 0s. Take SAP for example. SAP, the enterprise software giant, generated over $14 billion in revenue in 2011. Why? Because, according to SAP’s marketing group “you [...]
As a CEO, we must live with our customers. We must know and understand their behaviors, needs, wants, and views as they inform the strategic planning process. This is a fairly well accepted idea currently. We must dig deep to know what they think about our products and brand. Of course, no [...]
