Strategy is about shaping the future. There is, however, no guarantee that the future will turn out the way you want. You can use strategy to figure out how to achieve your purpose and ambitions. You move between where you want to go (ends) and what you need to do to get there (means). A great strategy is the quickest route from means to ends to shape your future.
Do you recognize this statement? Think also about the Key Performance Indicators in your organizations, which are seen by management as essential tools telling them if their business is on target or veering off course. They are still, however, also tools for measurement. What should we think of these Key Predictive Indicators?
“The more threatening externalities become for a company, the more there is a need to have strategic intelligence in place. Every company faces a continuous flow of threatening externalities”This statement is clear to everybody. But to foresee those threatening externalities, companies need to be able to monitor them in a timely fashion. A couple of years ago, I gave presentations about the “Management of Insights” and the “Management of Foresight” at the Dutch National Marketing Insights Event.
Courage is necessary to make change possible. And intellectual courage is necessary to challenge conventional wisdom and the imagination of new possibilities. Leadership must refuse to accept limits or stop at industry boundaries. Lack of courage prevents positive change at all levels. Look at ineffective politicians who shift positions based on polling data, not on their convictions. Managers equivocate in response to new initiatives, observe struggles without support and without resources.
The word crisis refers to a decisive moment or turning-point, which the euro never seems to reach. The single currency’s complaint is more like a chronic illness that is neither serious enough to kill the patient nor weak enough to be easily cured.Employment in the public sector: Is this a new time-bomb?
Do you remember the ‘three wise men’ of the EU, Van Rompuy, Barroso and Schulz, celebrating their receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December 2013? This looks like an example of toxic politics! Have they thought of new challenges to solve the European problem of high unemployment?
The result is the rapidly-increasing pressure on earnings which results in cost-cutting and laying-off people. We read stories like this daily in the media, where top management explains that market conditions have changed, that customer behavior has changed, that new competitors with new business models have entered the market, or that a new technology was accepted much faster than initially thought. Who can we blame for this?
Most localities have a few individuals who know many people across social and professional boundaries and facilitate networking amongst them. These people are called ‘connectors’.“It is amazing to see how the strategic intelligence solution of MI7 discovers and visualizes these new connectors in and beyond your sectors of industry and across the globe”
“Politicians keep throwing money to support weaker nations’ debt problems, they never talk about restoring growth”The above statement comes from Roger Bootle in Fortune Magazine, dated 8th October, 2012. Why should we listen to him, you may ask, as we read so much from so many economists, daily, about the problems across Europe? For two main reasons: Roger Bootle predicted the downturn of the 2002 dotcom bubble back in 1999, and the worldwide financial crash in 2007 back in 2003!
Imagine that your organization has a Company Radar Room which enables you to deliver the ‘early warnings’ that drive innovation, new market opportunities and business transformation, with the aim of getting to the future first?