Greetings!
Welcome to the Clear
Thoughts™ newsletter from
Uncommon Clarity
Strategic Thoughts - Top Twelve Perils |
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Which best describes your strategic predicament
and attendant risk?
1. You offer compelling value to a rapidly
growing
market
Biggest Risk: You aim too low
and succeed - while others swoop in and
capture the lion's share of the opportunity
2. You see dwindling demand for your products
and
services
Biggest Risk: You wait too long
to take a
sharp right turn toward new opportunities
while cash,
leverage, resources, and opportunities
dwindle as
well
3. You have many, many ideas
Biggest Risk: You spread resources
thinly or wallow in indecision, both of which
ensure
you move nothing of significance forward
4. You are headed on a new or greatly expanded
trajectory
Biggest Risk: Your current
organization
is the wrong organization for your new goals
and is
simply not up to the new challenges
5. You are ambitious and always ahead of the
curve
Biggest Risk: The organization
never catches up to the vision and fails to
deliver the expected quality on time
6. You are risk averse or content with the
status quo
Biggest Risk: Change continues,
as it is wont to do, and success fades while
you keep doing the same old thing
7. You do strategic planning regularly and
have a fat
binder to prove it
Biggest Risk: The fat binder
collects dust and you do what you would have
done if you hadn't done any strategic planning
at all
8. Your operations are truly excellent or
will be soon
Biggest Risk: Your focus on
operations detracts from your ability to be
strategic or to make internal concerns
secondary to external realities
9. You have a sound opportunity but struggle to
translate your vision into realistic plans
and profitable
results
Biggest Risk: You spend big
money, make a gallant effort, but experience
little success
10. You are highly competent, proud, always
learning,
and making steady progress on all your
initiatives
Biggest Risk: You are too
competent, capable, and proud to see the
ways in which you are holding yourself back,
slowing progress, or missing opportunities
11. You have the coolest new invention since
sliced
bread
Biggest Risk: It's cool but there
is no
market for it, at least not at a price and
volume that
would make it profitable
12. You are too consumed by the daily grind
to think
strategically
Biggest Risk: You burn-out while
someone else eats your lunch
13. You are wondering why I am providing a
thirteenth
item when the title is Twelve Perils
Biggest Risk: You are too
concerned with
details and consistency to see the big
picture, shift your
perspective, find new opportunities, and leap
the chasms
leaders must leap
Identifying potential problems is the first
step in
preventing and eliminating them. What can you
do to minimize your strategic risks?
Contact us at 413-527-3737 if you would
like to
discuss your predicament, perils, and
possibilities.
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People Thoughts - Hire Warnings |
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Many businesses are gearing up to meet
recovering
demand. This is important to you whether you
are hiring or not.
If you are hiring:
- Don't let loyalty drive you to re-hire an
under-
performer unless providing opportunities for
under-performers is part of your mission.
- Rethink your needs before simply filling
the same old positions using the same old
criteria.
- Hire talent over skill and experience.
Skill and experience can be acquired, talent
can not.
(For more about talent, read
Talent
Is Not Overrated, Nor Is It What You
Think.)
If you are hiring, now is a great time to
sign some top
talent. Careful sifting is as important as
ever, of course, and likely more difficult
because of the
sheer numbers of potential applicants.
If you aren't hiring:
- Don't forget that others are.
- Don't let those "exceptional recession
actions,"
such as salary and benefit cuts and
responsibility increases, become the "new
normal."
- Demonstrate a win-win attitude in all
employee relationships.
If times have been tough at your company,
especially if you have treated your employees
as if they
were lucky to have a job at all, it may be too
late to prevent a mass exodus as hiring picks
up. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try!
Give us a call at 800-527-0087 if you
would like to talk
about the likelihood of an exodus at your
company and
what you can do about it.
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Parting Thoughts - The Golden Rule in the Age of Diversity |
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Do onto others as you would have others do
onto you,
but keep in mind the possibility they don't
appreciate the
same things you appreciate!
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Ann Latham
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� 2010 Ann Latham. All rights reserved.
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Can We Help You? |
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Coming Soon:
Meeting Mastery - How to Cut Meetings in
Half or Cancel Them Altogether, a new
audio seminar by Ann Latham.
Interested in bringing the Meeting Mastery
workshop to your company so you can save time
and money and get better results? Call now to
schedule before we get booked up!
Other things on your mind? Give us a call at
413-527-
3737 and let's talk about how we can help you
get better results faster.
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