CNC Strategy Blog

So here we are a month into the New Year.  A month ago did you make a plan to improve yourself this year?  You know the whole New Year’s resolution ritual?  Did you vow to go to the gym more, spend more time with your family¸ eat healthier, save more, volunteer more, donate money to charity, a home improvement project, etc.?  How are successful have you been in keep with your resolutions?  Statistics show those two weeks into the New Year about half have given up on their resolutions.

Why do organizations have a 70% (source: Forbes) failure rate in implementing, executing and successfully adopting change?

Calvin Coolidge, the former U.S. President once stated the familiar quote, “The Business of America is Business.”   Calvin Coolidge also said “Baseball is our national game.”  He attended the 1924 World Series which is underway now in 2012.  This blog isn’t to debate the name of the best of 7 game tournament that determines the annual champion of Major League Baseball.  It is rather to draw comparisons between “America’s Greatest Pastime’ and business when it comes to strategy planning and strategy execution.   

Reinventing the the Strategic Planning PROCESS!

It is that time of year again when organizations think about doing strategic planning.  Some even go so far as to set an off-site session in some remote location, usually tropical, to do "Strategic Planning".  

So about right now, Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer is unveiling the new corporate strategy to all Yahoo employees at an all hands on meeting.  She shared this strategic plan with the board last week.  That means that through internal or external consultants she has had many meetings and looked at industry data, SWOT analysis, Kemper’s 5 forces, a lot of Excel worksheets, and many PowerPoint presentations before deciding where Yahoo will play and how they will win vs. their competition.   She has sold this to her executive team and the board of directors and today is disseminating this information to everyone at Yahoo with a pledge of transparency. 

Will there be a new one?  Yes it is coming in September. Oh my it is here! 

So the NFL and NCAA football seasons have started and are in full swing.  We all know that football (the American version) is a game of strategy or a game of X’s and O’s.  There are many similarities between business and professional football.  Both put a lot of effort into recruiting talent for strong teams.   Both leverage its strengths and expose the opponent’s weaknesses.  Here is where this blog is different from other business to football comparisons.  The major difference between professional football and business is that football does a much better job than business is balancing their strategy planning vs strategy execution.   In fact football has a laser like focus on strategy and strategy execution.  In business the focus is often on quarterly earnings.

With all the news of late on vitamins and compared to that continuously evolving on the use of vitamins, it only seems appropriate for us to talk about the difference of a vitamin or aspirin as it relates to your business.

As we enter the rememberance of 9/11, it reminds me of what things in life are important.  The memories of that day alone are still strong in mind, as I remember my phone ringing at 5:44 AM PDT that morning from our East Coat Regional Director, based in NYC, and then the day began.  Having sent someone in my place to attend a conference in DC, I was still in CA, and since HR was one of the groups that reported through me, the fact that I was receiving this call was no surprise.  At the end, the loss was 3 employees, yet the trauma of the survivors was equally as strong.  No one can ever know exactly how much each person felt, experienced or still is going through, yet there is no doubt it was and continues to be a lot.