Strategy Insight

It took me a very long time to have the courage to begin this blog. I’ve received a lot of encouragement from friends and family and especially my 15 year old son, Eli (he has a blog too). I’ve also tried to learn how to write in a way that I hope will inspire others as I have been inspired by the people in my life.

The “tipping point” for starting to write this blog was reading an excellent book titled “Naked Conversations” by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. They helped me to understand the whys and the hows of blogging and by the time I was done reading much of it, I decided it was worth the effort to <gulp> take the plunge.

I hope neither of us regret this 🙂

So here’s why I’m doing this.

The single most important thing that I’ve learned over the last 25 years of consulting (see About page) is that companies and organizations would do a lot better and make a much more meaningful contribution to society if they took the time or learned to answer four questions:

1. Who are we?

2. What are we?

3. What do we want to be?

4. What can stop us from getting there?

These questions are the core questions not only of creating any strategy but of being successful and, I think, happy.

I’m hoping that I can contribute to a dialogue that gives people a way to get at the essence of these questions and in doing so, help make a difference…because if companies get better at answering these questions, there should be better and more rewarding jobs, more growing communities and generally speaking, a better and happier world.

A pretty bold and lofty goal, huh? I think so too but I also think that the rewards justify the risk and investment of having this conversation.

Anyway, here’s my plan.

I’m planning to write — pretty regularly. I’m planning to present methods that I have found to be useful. I also want you to get to know the people in my life who, by virtue of their passion or some element of their character , teach me every single day a valuable insight that I try to make core to what I do and how I personally contribute. Lastly, from time to time I expect I’ll take a left turn and apply strategy to what is going on around us such as the management principles that made it necessary for the Packers to move Brett Favre. (yup, at a certain point they really had no choice.)

So that’s what I am signing up for.

And here’s what will be asked of you. I’m hoping that you’ll teach, challenge and make me smarter. I can promise you that I’m a pretty good listener and I catch on quick. Together I hope we’ll make one plus one equal at least three.

More tomorrow…and so the journey begins.

This entry was posted on August 14, 2008 at 4:08 am and is filed under Strategy. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: consulting, mission, purpose, Strategy