Sage Advice from Strategy Gurus
Helpful reminders on the fundamentals of strategy:
Your leadership team needs to “discuss, debate, and decide on the three to seven most important priorities that must be completed this year in order for you to be on track for your three-year picture…They need to be specific, measurable, and attainable.” - Gino Wickman (in Traction)
“Measuring what matters begins with the question: What is most important for the next three (or six, or twelve) months? Successful organizations focus on the handful of initiatives that can make a real difference, deferring less urgent ones. Their leaders commit to those choices in word and deed.” - John Doerr (in Measure What Matters)
“The one thing [a] system should provide par excellence is focus. This can only happen if we keep the number of objectives small…Each time you make a commitment, you forfeit your chance to commit to something else.” - Andy Grove (former CEO of Intel)
“An effective goal-setting system starts with disciplined thinking at the top, with leaders who invest the time and energy to choose what counts” by asking questions like “What are our main priorities for the coming period? Where should people concentrate their efforts?”- John Doerr (in Measure What Matters)
“When you’re the CEO or the founder of a company…you’ve got to say ‘This is what we’re doing,’ and then you have to model it. Because if you don’t model it, no one’s going to do it.” - Bill Campbell (former Intuit CEO and legendary coach to the who’s who of Silicon Valley as captured in his biography, Trillion Dollar Coach)
“When team leaders answer [How will we succeed?], essentially they are determining their strategy…an organization’s strategy is simply its plan for success. It’s nothing more than the collection of intentional decisions a company makes to give itself the best chance to thrive and differentiate from competitors.” - Patrick Lencioni (in The Advantage)
“I cannot tell you how many times when reviewing one-year goals at the end of the year, I observe clients debating what the goal actually meant. To avoid this, the goal must be specific, leaving no wiggle room.” - Gino Wickman (in Traction)
“Innovation means saying no to one thousand things.” - Steve Jobs (more on Jobs’ focus HERE)
We must all remember that once our strategy and priorities are defined and set then we need to talk about them frequently.
As CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, put it: “When you’re tired of saying it, people are starting to hear it.”
This is all about clarity and setting the proper direction.
In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”