This video covers the 5 parts of the Choosing Strategically program and includes the first part – The need to make BOLD and how to make them. We will also briefly cover some of the tests we have to make sure you have made strong choices.
A lot of Strategic Plans have little or no Strategy in them. Most are extensions of current trends and reflect no real Strategic Choices. Have you chosen to be close to your customers?, operationally efficient?, to value the talent in your organization?, and grow sales? Well, those are not strategic choices. Everybody says that and worst, sometimes they are just buzzwords. Choosing Strategically will teach you what are the Strategic Choices you must make and how to make them in an impactful way.
Video with Overview of the Framework and the importance of making bold choices.
In this video, Roger Martin explains what are not strategic choices.CHOOSING Strategically will tell you what are the Strategic CHOICES you must consider for having a Strategy and how to make Strategic decisions that make a difference!
Why you must choose to win and what are the best goals you can choose to define winning.
Set winning goals.
Attack like a winner.
Defend like a winner.
Choose to win. Play to win.
Choose to Win Video
Her’s a great video – a Roger Martin conference for Deloitte explaining why you must “Play to Win”This work is based on the playbook described in “Playing to Win”, a book written by Roger Martin, ex-dean of the Rotman school of business and Head of Monitor consulting firm, and AG Lafley, former Chairman and CEO of Procter and Gamble. I will also be giving it a slightly different spin connecting it with my other Frameworks.CHOOSING Strategically will tell you what are the Strategic CHOICES you must consider for having a Strategy and how to make Strategic decisions that make a difference!
We covered the main types of Strategic CHOICES you must make with the Strategy4Action Framework, and we will recap them here in the 3rd video of Choosing Strategically covering: the Big Picture decisions, the 6 Key Strategic decisions, and how these can be split into Where To Play and How to Win decisions. We will also show you what are the main components of a Strategic statement.
The main Strategic Choices every organization must make.
CHOOSING Strategically will tell you what are the Strategic CHOICES you must consider for having a Strategy and how to make Strategic decisions that make a difference!
Sometimes it can be hard to make some Strategic Choices and you often have conflicting optionsor even a divided team around them; that is why the Choosing Strategically Framework will address how to choose strategically between opposing options while bringing your team together.
This video not only covers how two choose strategically between opposing options, but how to create better alternatives using integrative thinking.
How to choose strategically between opposing options while bringing your team together and how to create better alternatives using integrative thinking. .
Integrative thinking has been championed by Roger Martin and is explained in “Creating Great Choices”, a book he wrote with Jennifer Riel, IDEO Partner and Chief Strategy Officer, and Roger’s colleague at the Rotman school of Management.
They have been teaching it to students and corporations for over a decade now.
Here’s a Google Talk where Roger Martin talks extensively about how to create great choices and about integrative thinking.
CHOOSING Strategically will tell you what are the Strategic CHOICES you must consider for having a Strategy and how to make Strategic decisions that make a difference!
This video is about two things. First, how to know when to change your strategies. Secong, making your team Strategy savvy so they can be strategically EVERYDAY!
Getting an early warning system about your strategy needing change: at a certain point, you must hit the Pause Button and think – we will present you with 5 questions developed by the great Peter Drucker and Roger Martin that will make you think whether you need to Stop and change your strategic choices (and even your whole strategy) or not. Peter Drucker and Roger Martin are major sources of inspiration for this video
And we will also tell you how to make your team Strategy Savvy and the benefits it bring: They will start looking at everything they do with a strategic eye and act strategically EVERYDAY.
Do you know when to press pause or stop in your strategy and how to be able to “Play” better and “Fast Forward”.
A related video is Roger Martin explaining why a plan is not a strategy!
CHOOSING Strategically will tell you what are the Strategic CHOICES you must consider for having a Strategy and how to make Strategic decisions that make a difference!
The Strategy4Action Framework is a step-by-step guide to define or fine-tune a company’s Strategy and put it in action. This is the first of 12 videos. All videos are 4 to 10 minutes long. The videos cover the 3 main steps: Analysis, Strategy, and Implementation. This video describes what kind of organization can benefit from this program, more details about the 3 basic steps of the framework, and how STRATEGY4ACTION is different from other frameworks. It also tells you a little bit about me. Thank you for Watching. Luis Gato
Overview if the Strategy4Action FrameworkHow much time do you dedicate to Strategy? How structured does that process turn out to be? With 3 main and indispensable building blocks – Analysis, Strategy, and Action – the Strategy4Action Framework is a step-by-step guide to define or fine-tune your company’s Strategy and put it in action. Gato Consulting is here to support you in that process.
The full video of the ex Procter & Gamble CEO, A.G. Lafley talking about the importance of a good strategic process can be found here:
This is the first of 3 videos on External Analysis and covers how to do a strategic analysis of Macro Trends, Markets and Competitors.
We will look at Macro Trends by applying a PESTEL Analysis. We will use several techniques to analyze in detail market and competitors, including a customized questionnaire that will give you insights into your reputation and that of competitors’, your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and that of competitors’, what can differentiate your products and increase your customers’ Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) for your products or services.
This is the first of 3 videos on External Analysis and covers how to do a strategic analysis of Macro Trends, Markets and Competitors. How well do you really know your customers? How about those that are not your customers and could be? How about your competitors? The strategy4Action Framework has a very detailed toolset for this and can help you refresh or create a top-level monitoring system for your market.
The full video of former Pepsico CEO, Indra Nooyi talking about how she started the company transformation with a forward scan of the market can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlP6AdQWbSg
The full video of Dell CEO, Michael Dell talking customer needs, and how to look at opportunities differently by imagining the future, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8llmJ-1YqUI
The full video of the former Procter & Gamble CEO, A.G. Lafley, talking about how he transformed a $500 million business into a $2.5 Billion one by doing a careful analysis of the market, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlurK3LeTpg
This second video of External Analysis will do a Strategic Industry Analysis by looking at Industry Structure, Stage and Attractiveness and how to improve your odds against 5 forces that affect each industry. The strategic Industry analysis will use a couple of different tools. With the 5 Forces Model we will look at Buyers, Substitute Products, Suppliers, Barriers to Entry, and Industry rivalry to measure your Industry’s Structure and Attractiveness and how you can improve your odds versus those forces. We will end this with making sure your Industry’s stage (#9) is understood and agreed upon in terms of Lifecycle and existing level of Fragmentation or Consolidation.
Strategic Industry Analysis with the Five Forces ModelIndustries are not just made of Competitors and Customers. The 5 forces Model is one the most famous Strategic yools to analyze an Industry in all its forces. Most of the time and industry moves slowly and you may have a solidified vied of it while nonetheless it is moving. Every once in a while, this is an analysis that will give you a refreshed look at the industry and its trends and, importantly, how you can try to shift the power you have versus each of the forces to your favor. And you can take advantage of the industry in its lifecycle as well as consolidation moves. This is a complex and difficult analysis but the Strategy4Action Framework has pragmatic toolset for it.The Strategy4Action Framework is a step-by-step guide to define or fine-tune your company’s Strategy and put it in action.
Know more about the companies featured on this video:
Third and last part of the External Analysis – How to find Differentiate your products and how to define Critical Success Factors? This video will look at Customer Needs and tell you how to identify ways to differentiate your products using two powerful techniques: Willingness-To-Pay and Critical Success Factors which we will explain in detail how to determine them. It also has a few examples you might find creative.
On this video, we will define Customers’ Willingness-To-Pay – a very important concept to grasp as well as Customer Needs. Through them, we can uncover elements of Differentiation, and we will run a very effective way of determining Critical Success Factors you must master.
Learn more abou the companies featured on this video:
We look at differentiation differently. We really do. Perhaps you think you have it all figure out and maybe you have. But Strategy4Action has several structured tools to find differentiation and a few of them are on this video. By analyzing Customer Needs and Competitors we can estimate Customer’s Willingness-To-Pay for your products and its potential differentiating features. The tools we have for determining the Critical Success Factors you must master also contributes to finding differentiation factors. Not to mention other tools in the framework like the market questionnaire, engaging your employees, and looking at substitute products and product development which we discuss in other videos.
We will show you how to do a Strategical Internal Analysis of a Company – we will look at your current Products and Segments vis-à-vis the market analysis done within the external analysis. Then, we will look at your Value Chain. We will also look other resources such as Financial, Intangibles, and Systems & IT.We will also take a look at your Organization, including Human Resources, Culture, your current Values, and Purpose.
Video on how to do a Strategic Internal AnalysisIn “The Future of Management, Gary Hamel – Stratego and London Business School – showed how a number of companies are involving people and benefitting from it in terms of innovation including and perhaps, more importantly, in terms of innovation of management processes – Strategy4Action will tap into some of those ideas. You have access to a Spring of Ideas and potential energy, and its basically free. Tap into them and harness the energy of your employees.
Lear more about the products and services featured on this video:
In this video we will wrap-up the Analysis part of the Framework. We start with the Growth/Share Matrix, aka BCG Model, a valuable way to look at your business portfolio and how it might affect the future Cash Flow of your company. Then, and importantly, based off all the steps we went over previously, we will be building an ever-growing and prioritized SWOT. But this is a different SWOT in that (i) it includes a Short-Term and Long-term perspective and (ii) it forces one to think of actionable suggestions to act on Opportunities, Threats, Weaknesses, and Opportunities. We will end with an analysis of your Core Competences and Competitive Advantage – the most important concept in Business Strategy. This video includes Warren Buffet on the topic of Competitive Advantage.
How exactly should you go about filtering all the ideas and opportunities captured throughout this framework? And the most important concept in Business Strategy – If you don’t have a Competitive Advantage, you don’t have a Strategy! That’s what video 6 is about.
Here are a few videos of Warren Buffet talking abut Competitive Advantage:
And the always interesting Chairman Letters’ from the Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet; the most famous Chairman’s Letter in the world. Several of them mention Competitive Advantage and Motes: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html
The Strategy4Action Framework is a step-by-step guide to define or fine-tune your company’s Strategy and put it in action.
This is the first of 3 videos on Strategy Formulation by the STRATEGY4ACTION framework, focusing on a handful of main choices I call “THE BIG PICTURE” of a Company’s Strategy. On the heels of the Analysis Wrap Up, we will use Michael Porter’s Generic Strategies’ framework to pick one for your company. Then, we will define what is the Competitive Advantage(s) you will be building, and the Core Competences that should support it; whether you have them or need to enable them.
Then, we will create or fine-tune your Vision, Mission and/or Purpose statements, and what are the Values and/or Behaviors you want to uphold in the company.
And because we have a compilation of Opportunities, we will create a draft definition of Long term Goals that will be fine-tuned when creating Financial Projections.
The choice of a Generic Strategy and the other main Choices of a Company’s Strategy form what can be called the Big Bicture. It’s like a flag that shows the way towards a challenging and exciting goal that has been desired and established. And, at the same time, it’s a framework for decision making, clarifying priorities and defining what you do and what you don’t do. Finally, it’s a source of inspiration to everyone in your organization for the foreseeable future.
When was the last time you took the time to review or consider the elements of “The Big Picture”? How structured was that effort? Strategy4Action brings you the best practices on it and facilitates that work while, at the same time, bringing more of your employees’ ideas to the table. As the example in the video demonstrates, you can find a path to healthy return on capital by finding the right strategy even in the worst of industries.
Know how to really move the needle for your company and grow by leaps and bounds instead of just step-by-step. Covers Product Development, Geographic Expansion, Vertical Integration, Capacity Expansion, Business Diversification, and Corporate Development. This video includes some great examples from Central New York.
Half Strategy, half Analysis, (it certainly requires specific data and analysis), this is a step that you must go through – you can’t miss looking into these decisions that can really make the difference for your company.
Learn more about the companies featured in the video:
After working in such a detailed way on building your strategy, you should be able to convey it in a simple and memorable way. That’s what we do in the first 2.5 minutes of this video: we present the components of a great Strategic Statement that summarize your Strategy. Then, we follow it by a great example of a tremendous Strategy.
We have established “The Big Picture” which sets the framework for decision making. We ended the search for opportunities with the 6 Key strategic decision that can make the needle turn for your company. The last step in strategizing is go through your compiled SWOT and prioritize all the actionable suggestions we gathered for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and threats and group them into a handful of main Opportunities and Initiatives. Finally we do three final tests, including a detailed ROI calculation.
Your Strategy statement is composed of the elements of your Big Picture and the main Opportunities and Initiatives you will be pursuing.
What do you talk about when you talk about your strategy? In this video, we will unveil the components of a great Strategic Statement that summarize your Strategy
The last 3 videos of STRATEGY4ACTiON are about how to put Strategy in Action. This video is about creating organizational alignment. We have to making sure all your physical and intangible assets, namely your people and your Culture are aligned and engaged to make your plans work.
Once they have figured out their Strategy, most companies will out it one a paper, assign executives to their goals and hope it happens. As the saying goes, “hope is not a strategy”. Strategy4Action goes much deeper than that.
There is not a lot out there in terms of case studies or scholarly research on how to put strategy in action. The best Model is McKinsey’s 7S Framework which compels companies to look at several areas of the organization and get them aligned. Strategy4Action developed a few intuitive techniques to make sure that, as we investigate the different areas of the organization and generate actionable suggestions to make sure they support he company’s Strategy. This includes looking at your skills, your Value chain, Systems, Organizational structure, Culture and Shared Values. One important additional step we included will improve the Coordination among the different departments and/or divisions of your company which is extremely important when implementing Strategy and making a company more efficient.
Part of putting your Strategy in Action is making sure your key assets are aligned to your strategy and that there is Strategic Fit within the organization. That’s one of the reasons why we did an Internal Analysis (video5) – to we have a starting point. The Strategy4Action Framework has a several tools to make sure everyone and everything is one the same boat and paddling in the same direction.
Great Financial Projections are not just a way to represent the Strategic Plan and quantify Goals that can be tracked. The Financial Projections will help set the pace for action and it can add value to your company by turning bankers and investors to your side. That’s what video 11 is about. It also discusses controls, valuation, and Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG).
What’s a Strategic Plan without Financial Projections? or Financial Projections without a careful strategic reflection? We will create monthly, detailed P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statements. What is different about Strategy4Action is that we will ad Calibration mechanisms to make sure you’re neither too optimistic or pessimistic, creating projections you can bank on. When you do your strategy work with a great financial model, you can count on your financials to help you set the pace for action and add value by putting banks and other investors on your side. It’s important to establish a track record of credibility behind financial projections you consistently meet.
We will complement the financial Projections with a company Valuation using a couple of methods and explore “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” – BHAG – that can help motivate your company.
Financials will help set the pace for Action. Financial Projections and the Action Plan (video 12) should be done interactively. As you get deeper into details on one you will feel the need to adjust the other. As you get constraints on the former, you might need to compromise on the latter.
Watch ful video of AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su talking about their Strategy and Financial Projection at AMD investor Day 2022 as well as AMD CFO, Davinder Kumar talking about their Financial model and Financial Projections here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VYHtSseX9k
The Strategy4Action Framework is a step-by-step guide to define or fine-tune your company’s Strategy and put it in action.
The last video of STRATEGY4ACTION shows how to create, implement, and control a detailed Action Plan for your Strategy. It also starts with a quick recap of the whole STRATEGY4ACTON framework and ends…with a Punch.
As soon as we start strategizing, and going through each step, there are repeated calls for actionable suggestions, and this is the final step where we put it together into a master action plan.
And for this, we’ll resource to the Best Project Management and Strategy Execution practices. On this step we will show you how to create a detailed Gantt Chart or charts with all tasks that must be accomplished, a sufficiently clear Scope, someone to Own it, a Deadline, and Project Budget to put your Strategy in Action!
What you will get from this program is a great detailed Action Plan that will give you confidence your strategy will be set in motion. How does one get from your Strategy to the action plan is what we explain in this video.
