5 Strategy Ideas Still On My Mind...

Hi-

I mentioned the folks at Yellow Armadillo last week.

One thing that Jon Peck tells me every time we speak, “You have to bring the audience’s voice into your work.”

So, this week, that’s what I’m doing.

I’m asking you to tell me what is on your mind.

Thank you in advance for the 2 minutes it takes to share your thoughts with me.

Now to your regularly scheduled email:

A few random ideas on strategy and branding I’ve had rolling around since I wrote about my visit with the Canadian SME podcast crew:

• I think that marketing and strategy are closer together: but I still think that too much strategy at the corporate level is just a glorified version of planning.

• People don’t have strategies in place for a lot of reasons: the most common one is a fear of being wrong. People still fall into the “trying to be everything to everyone” trap.

• If you keep the CFA framework in mind, you’ll be ahead of the game:

  • Choice/Focus/Action: Choose your ambition. Focus on the things that will move you towards it. Take action.

• VUCA might not be as off track as I thought in the past:

  • Volatile. Uncertain. Complex. Ambiguous.

  • The more I read about and learn about the current state of things, the more I feel that we are dealing with more uncertainty and volatility than we have since the 1930s and 1940s. But if you go back further, maybe things aren’t that crazy.

• The big question is still: “Why do some businesses succeed and others fail?”

  • Coupled with: “Is this success repeatable?”

  • Too often, these questions go unasked and unanswered.

Let me know what you think.

Dave