Last week I gave the students in my graduate Nonprofit Strategy course their midterm in which I asked them to invent their own strategic planning process. After studying various approaches all semester, I thought it would be interesting to see what they would come up with. With that in mind, I thought I would create something a bit different than my Mission Impact approach – … [Read more...] about A New Strategy Approach
Strategy
Leading Change Pitfalls
Leading Change is one of the most challenging tasks of top leaders. You may have memorized Kotter’s eight steps and have a big guiding coalition ready to help you out, but there are still plenty of pitfalls out there. Here are six of them to watch out for as you Lead Change:* 1. Cautious Management Culture. Peter Drucker is attributed with the quote “Culture eats … [Read more...] about Leading Change Pitfalls
Essential Strategic Leadership Skills
You have a vision of where you want the organization to go, but what skills do you need to lead it there? Authors of a Harvard Business Review article* suggest six essential Strategic Leadership Skills: *Anticipate. Pay attention to the competitive landscape. Look at new entrants and what they are doing differently. Look beyond product competition. What are others doing … [Read more...] about Essential Strategic Leadership Skills
Strategic Creativity
“Thinking outside of the box” is a difficult thing to do – especially when you have been ingrained within an organization or industry for many years. Following are a few techniques to help us all “think different” which are from a recent article in Harvard Business Review.* They are designed to help us identify possible strategic opportunities we had not seen before. 1. … [Read more...] about Strategic Creativity
The Importance of All Stakeholders
You might think that only the “senior” people in your organization feel like they have a “stake” in its current operations and future. You would be wrong. I have heard all of the excuses. “They don’t know enough about the substance of the issues to provide input.” “They don’t really care.” “We already know what they think.” Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong. There are … [Read more...] about The Importance of All Stakeholders