Blog Yes & Know

Employees and Strategy

For many executives, the two words above don’t go together. Why? Because they think strategy is done in the C-suite. I’m here to tell you that’s old thinking. Life is …

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements: Process

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements – power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. Miss tuning one and you’ll fail. Add items that don’t blend and you’ll fail. Process …

The 5 Structural Elements of Strategy: Decision-Making

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements – power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. Miss tuning one and you’ll fail. Add items that don’t blend and you’ll fail. Decision-Making …

The Heartbeat Model

Much of CEOs I talk with spend a lot of time thinking about ways to drive growth of their business. Perhaps they never even stop thinking about it. And after they work on it a lot, they tend to engage their exec team on the topic. Once that level of discussion has happened, a group of incredibly talented c-suite people have figured out how to “grab” on to what it is they need to do. But the key question remains, how do employees “grab on” to the strategy?

Listen to the Oppressed

We listen to the rich, but we need to learn to listen to the oppressed. The voices that are often not heard are the ones that can add a dimension to a growth strategy that can’t be found at the top of the organization. It’s not glamorous and it likely won’t make it into the PPT slide that goes to the CEO or to the Board. It will however make a difference in how that strategy actually becomes reality. And you’ve heard me say it before. A strategy not made into reality is just a set of theoretical slides. Strategy has to be about the outcomes that are created.