Strategic Planning and Management Insights

Are you a VP, CEO, or leader planning a strategy session for your organization? If you are, there are a lot of reasons why you may need to use a Strategic Planning Facilitator for your next strategy meeting. 

The never ending story of Brexit, American protectionism, and the Yellow Vest movement in France represent rising political risks, impacting organizations around the world. As a consequence, business leaders have to deal with challenging social-political situations and rising political uncertainty in their home markets on top of changing economic conditions regarding employment, finance, growth, and trade. Investment and growth plans have to be continually updated, and recruiting staff can become more difficult, while the cost of inputs like workforce and resources rise. Foreign political developments have the potential to devastate GDP, supply chains, export rate, wages, and more. As an example, the US trade war with China has had a severe effect on business in several countries. 

In this episode of our Strategy & Leadership Podcast, we were joined by Jacob Baadsgaard Founder & CEO of Disruptive Advertising. Jacob began his career in the web analytics industry, eventually moving into marketing after working with various enterprise and Fortune 100 organizations to track their marketing efforts and data insights. Jacob founded Disruptive Advertising as an entrepreneur, and the organization now has over 150 employees.

Are you looking to keep your employees happier and more engaged (and employed longer) with your company?

Once you’ve created a strategic plan for your business, the next step is to roll out that plan throughout your organization. One of the most important aspects of executing your strategic plan successfully is getting buy-in from your team.

An immigrant from South Africa, Elon Musk is an inventor, entrepreneur, investor and multi-billionaire. After dropping out of a Stanford PhD program, Musk went on to create and sell his first technology company to Compaq Computer Co. for over $300 million (USD). After that, he and his brother created what we know today as PayPal, before selling to eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Finally, he had the funds to start a private space exploration company called SpaceX, as well as an electric vehicle company called Tesla shortly after. Along with having an involvement in other companies such as Solar City, Neuralink, and the Boring Company, Musk’s success has amassed him a net worth or over $19 billion.

Successful projects and programs should be governed by a clear strategy, which should be designed to deliver business benefits. However, it is surprisingly easy for the work carried out as part of these programs or projects to drift off of the intended course or to become misaligned from the wider strategic objectives.

From program management, through to team building training, there are a number of steps that can be taken to improve this alignment. Below are four outlined steps that explain how they can contribute towards a situation where project work and business strategy are pulling in the same direction: