Planning is clearly an integral part of executing a successful strategy, however simply having a plan is not enough to achieve this. There are many factors to take into account to ensure the plan is as clear and efficient as possible. First of all, the plan...
Many different methods for planning exist, each with their own benefits and drawbacks in different situations. No one technique will be suitable for every situation, in fact, a number of these techniques will usually be required for a successful overall strategy. Different methods are used...
Planning is essential to ensuring you achieve your goals. Completing tasks that enable you to reach your goal is crucial, and hence planning these tasks must be done first. A good plan identifies causes and effects in achievable stages and all good plans must begin with...
SMART is a useful guide for setting objectives - especially for performance management and personal development. The letters stand for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Specific Specific goals are clear and unambiguous. They outline exactly what is to be accomplished and by whom. It is important to note any...
Unfortunately, every strategy or project has a budget and keeping to this strict guideline, whilst completing the entirety of a task, is often the biggest challenge to any project manager. To ensure this is done efficiently, unnecessary tasks or projects need to be stopped while the...
Many different strategic planning tools helping organisations to compete effectively exist. One of the most famous of these is Ohmae’s 3C Model, developed in 1982. The model integrates what the author believes to be the 3 most critical elements that managers initiating a strategy should...
The Boston Matrix Model, devised by Bruce Henderson, is a tool for assessing the market potential of products and services already in production, as well as ones in a more infant stage. Once the product or service has been defined in the table below a...
A range of tools can be used to plan, implement, or evaluate a strategy. These tools are useful as getting small tasks wrong, such as not identifying relevant stakeholders, can have significant consequences for the overall strategy. Trend Analysis: Identifying trends, whether they are within the industry...
Due to rapid and unpredictable changes to the economic and political environments, traditional long-term planning methods have become less effective in recent years. For this reason, scenario planning, whereby various future scenarios are predicted and planned for, has become a popular approach. The ideal outcome...
Gary Hamel’s ‘New Innovation Solution’, in his book “Leading the Revolution” (2000), is one of the most well-known explanations of how best to give ideas the best possible opportunity to flourish, whilst also not wasting resources on weak ideas. He carefully explains how best to...