Strategy.Inc

Strategy.Inc is established by Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, Ph.D., and Timothy Tiryaki, Ph.D .ABD, to create better organizations through strategy design & implementation consulting. 

We research, advocate and pioneer the whole-person, developmental consulting approach,  moving away from the prescriptive and traditional approach in strategy design and implementation.  

Our goal is to assist consultants in developing high-impact skills in strategy design, generation, formulation, and execution, focusing on creating triple-bottom-line value.

Our primary focus is the Certified Strategy and Implementation Consultant program, where we empower like-minded strategy consultants or those that want to move into the space of strategy consulting and implementation support.

Co-Founder, Mentor and Educator

Do Strategy

Based on 10+ years experience as trusted advisor, 15+ years as executive trainer and 20+ years as strategy researcher, I know how to make your strategy work. My methodology follows a set of steps for every organization and client.

☑    Analysis of current state: Through collaborative sessions, we (re-)discover the nature of your organization and determine the strengths and weaknesses that can make or break the strategy.

☑    Synthesis and strategy outline: we develop ideas and choose best scenarios to lay out a plan that will be refined and referred to at later stages.

☑    Development of action plan: After checking with your management team, we translate the strategy into tasks and directions for specific teams and situations to account for any gaps between present and future. 

☑    Monitoring of execution: Finally, I guide you through strategy execution with advice and project mentoring. I make sure a project works and company plans stay relevant based on the specific situation.

Want to know more or get to know me better: send me an email at jeroen@jeroenkraaijenbrink.com or a LinkedIn message.

Strategy & Leadership Consultant and Mentor

Aside from wanting to grow you, and your team. I also research and write on topics about strategy planning, execution, and leadership. 

I have 7 published books about strategy:
The One-Hour Strategy: Building a Company of Strategic Thinkers
The Strategy Handbook (2nd ed): The Secret Sauce to Daily Business Success
Strategy Consulting (Cambridge Elements in Business Strategy)
The Strategy Handbook, Part 1: Strategy Generation
The Strategy Handbook, Part 2: Strategy Execution
No More Bananas: How to Keep Your Cool in the Collective Madness
Unlearning Strategy: The 10 Most Persistent Strategy Myths to Forget Immediately

Furthermore, I have written a PhD dissertation, 15+ scientific journal papers, 50+ conference papers, and numerous professional publications in the last 15 years, various of which have received nominations and awards for their excellence and impact. Examples include the Seal of Excellence Certificate by the European Commission, the Journal of Management Scholarly Impact Award, and the Best Empirical Paper Award and the Carolyn Dexter Award for Best International Paper at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management.

Strategy Researcher and Author

Public Speaker, Panelist & Keynote Speaker 

Talk title: Personal Leadership in an Overheated World

Speaker at University of Oxford - Saïd Business School

Talk title: Covid-19 as Catalyst for Lifelong E-learning

Speaker at the Worlds of Learning Summit 2020

Keynote Speaker at the 2020 EFMD MarCom, External and Alumni Relations Conference

Talk title: The bright side of crisis: Using Covid-19 as catalyst for change

Keynote Speaker at the 2020 Future Group Executive Meeting

Talk Title: Advancing Strategy Practice through Theory? A Case for Methods and Frameworks

Keynote Speaker at the International Conference on Leadership, Technology, Innovation and Management

Keynote Speaker at the 11th International Strategic Management Conference

Forbes

I have written 100+ shorter and longer articles as a Forbes contributor. I started in 2018 with articles about my vision of strategy, societal developments, and organizational and personal leadership in the turbulent world of today.
See my contributor page: www.forbes.com/sites/jeroenkraaijenbrink

“[About Jeroen’s articles], it was a revelation for me as his vision of the strategy seems to me to be relevant and in line with the current needs of organizations. The whole-brain, whole-person consulting approach is a game-changing view.

-	Forester, Strategy Consultant & Entrepreneur at LUMENA

Forbes.com contributor

University of Amsterdam Business School

Bringing professional industry knowledge about strategy to diverse international groups in the executive MBA program. Taught Competitive Strategy, Strategy Execution and Entrepreneurship to full-fledged professionals. Provided in-company strategy programs for executives and employees for corporations such as Avanade and Rabobank

“He was the lecturer on strategy (execution). The simple way in which he conveyed key concepts on strategy execution and strategy in general are still resonating. He combined, in an elegant way, both academic and business (practical) insights on strategy execution to a diverse group of students without losing us in all that jargon.”

-	Raj, Manager New Product Commercialization at Tata Steel Europe

Adjunct Associate Professor

TSM Business School

I started executive teaching in 2009 at TSM's Executive MBA program for full-fledged professionals in various different industries. Over the years I've also supported the board in idea development, management of the curriculum and maintaining a consistent educative program that was compatible with the needs of experienced professionals.

Lecturer Executive MBA

Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Senior Researcher and Team Leader

University of Twente

Associate Professor

Assistant professor

As the leader of your organization, unit or department, you have your goals:

• Serve your customers in the best possible way
• Get and keep your people focused and inspired
• Balance performance and organizational health
• Center on the long-term purpose and continuity
…and a whole lot more

Despite having in mind how you will achieve these goals, unforeseen things always happen that keep you from getting where you want your organization to be. As research shows, no less than two-third of formulated strategy plans fail. To beat these odds, you need an actionable and engaging strategy that your employees and stakeholders believe in.

I help companies generate and execute exactly that type of strategy. Once we work together, I support you in your strategy and leadership skills and help you discover, formulate, and execute the right strategy for your organization.  Whether your existing strategy needs to be adjusted, or you need to build it from scratch, there are proven tools and clear steps to follow. Together, we can have a look at where your pain points are and where your moment of opportunity lies.

Based on my combined academic and professional experience, my key strength is turning fragmented ideas and plans into a crisp and coherent strategy that your people will and want to execute.

Let's have a virtual coffee!

↳ jeroenkraaijenbrink.com
↳ strategykickstart.com

One of my most successful posts last year was about the “T-Shaped vs. V-Shaped Employee.” But, there’s more than just these two types. Which type are you, I, T, M or V? 

With almost 3M impressions and 32k engagements, last year’s post generated a lot of response. One of the most often made comment is that there’s more than just these two types. 

While we may be able to draw an entire alphabet, I like this typology of types: I, T, M and V that was put forward by Mike Dyne on Medium. This is what the four types of employee stand for (Dyne’s descriptions):

I-Shaped Employees
I-shaped employees have a narrow area of expertise and little or no knowledge or experience in other areas. While they may excel in their specific area of expertise, they may struggle to collaborate with others and bring a diverse set of skills to their work.

T-Shaped Employees
T-shaped employees are specialists in one area with shallow knowledge in other areas. They can be valuable team members who can contribute their deep expertise to the group. Typically, T-shaped employees are more focused and task-oriented.

M-Shaped Employees
M-shaped employees have deep knowledge in two or more areas. They are adaptable and able to switch between different areas of expertise while also being able to integrate them together. They tend to be more visionary and creative.

V-Shaped Employees
V-shaped employees have deep knowledge in one area and medium-deep, medium-broad knowledge in adjacent areas. They are versatile and agile and can switch roles and grow. V-shaped employees tend to be more communicative and collaborative.

I’m the V-Shaped type; not an employee per see, but a V-Shaped entrepreneur. I have one area where I have developed deep expertise over the past 20 years. And next to that I have built and continue to build a set of adjacent skills and expertise that complement my core area. 

What about you? And your the right type for you, or should you develop into another type?

If you enjoy this post, you will enjoy my new book, The Strategic Leadership Playbook. See the Featured Items in my profile or the link in the comment below.

#employeedevelopment
#teammanagement
#growthmindset

Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

Strategy and Leadership Thought Leader | Top 20 LinkedIn Creator | No-Nonsense Collaborator, Educator, Mentor and Author | Empowering Leaders With Strategic Insight and Guided Execution

Most people want change to be instant and painless. But that’s not how it works.  

Change takes time and often is painful. Embrace this simple fact and start managing change effectively.

When we want change, we often define a desired end state, contrast it with where we are today, and want to bridge the gap in between as quickly and cleanly as we can. We’ve all experienced that this doesn’t work. Any significant change that is worth making is not simply a matter of quickly closing a gap. Never. 

Why? Because change implies an emotional roller coaster. The problem is that we tend to approach change as a rational decision or design problem: we’re at A today, we want to be at C tomorrow, and all we need to do is B. 

What we overlook when doing so is that change means loss. And people need time to process loss. Change affects personal relationships, positions, and power. And change creates uncertainty, anxiety, and numerous other emotions.

While we may want to ignore those emotions and short cut them, we can’t. We simply have to go through the emotional roller coaster. Of course, we can have some effect on the extent to which emotions play a role, but avoiding them altogether isn’t possible. 

The good news is that the emotional roller coaster is predictable. As the science shows, most people go through similar emotional steps when going through change. While the precise models and number of steps differ, the overall picture is consistent.

Have a close look at the figure and let it sink in. See how the start of change implies loss and triggers denial, anxiety, shock, and so forth. The slope first goes down, ending at significant stress.

Then there’s a transition period during which people start to accept that the change is real and inevitable. During this period of mental turmoil, the downward slope reverses and gradually turns into an upward slope.

Once the transition period has taken place, things look more positive. People start to use their creativity to think about solutions. And, after the skepticism is over, acceptance is coming, followed by impatience, hope, and eventually leading to energy and enthusiasm.

For anyone responsible for change (which is every executive, leader, manager or entrepreneur), I recommend learning this figure by heart or printing it and sticking it on your wall. In this way, you’re always reminded that change is an emotional roller coaster and that you need to treat your people accordingly—with care, understanding and compassion.  

[Featured in The Strategic Leadership Playbook. Originally published in June, 2023]

More of this? For 63 more tools like this, plus step-by-step instructions for using them, get The Strategic Leadership Playbook. See link in the comment below.

#selfdevelopment
#changemangement
#selfreflection

Strategy and Leadership Companion | Top 20 LinkedIn Creator and Thought Leader | No-Nonsense Collaborator, Educator, Mentor and Author | Empowering Leaders With Strategic Insight and Guided Execution

To generate and execute strategy successfully you need several types of people involved. But who and what is their role? Make sure you have at least these four in place. 

One important cause of the high failure rates in strategy is that the right people are not involved. They lack the right skills, get the wrong role, or they are not present at all. 

To counter this problem and increase your strategy success rate, it is recommended to have four types of people involved: Experts, Executives, Managers and Employees—and each with the right role, focus and skillset. 

As a starting point we can think of the strategy playing field in terms of two dimensions: strategy and implementation. The simple logic is that some people need to be good at one, others at both, and still others at none of them. 

Accordingly, these are the four roles for successful strategy and implementation:

EXPERT (High strategy, High implementation)
• Name: Strategy professional, consultant, CSO, strategy officer
• Role: lead a complete strategy and implementation project, as well as ongoing monitoring and updating the strategy
• Level of skill: deep, mastery, proficiency
• Involvement: critical for success, either internally or externally
• Decision-power: low, mostly informal influence or on process

EXECUTIVE (High strategy, Low implementation)
• Name: CXO, director, boss, board member, top management
• Role: formal responsibility for the organization’s strategy, provide overview, develop vision and make decisions
• Level of skill: broad, informed, understands importance
• Involvement: essential for mandate, support and budget
• Decision-power: high, both formal and informal

MANAGER (Low strategy, High implementation)
• Name: middle manager, team leader, department head, supervisor
• Role: participate in corporate strategy and lead strategy project in their own unit (with or without Expert)
• Level of skill: focused, to fulfill their role in the process
• Involvement: important for smooth implementation, cascading, and progress
• Decision-power: medium, limited to their responsibilities

EMPLOYEE (Low strategy, Low implementation)
• Name: employee, staff, worker, operator
• Role: participate in strategy project and provide input; execute their part of the work during implementation
• Level of skill: shallow, enough to appreciate strategy
• Involvement: useful for detailed knowledge and lasting change 
• Decision-power: low, limited to their own job and role

Two notes: 
1. The roles are relative. E.g., when it concerns the strategy of a manager’s department, then they serve largely as executive for that department.

2. Roles, skills, involvement and decision-power relate only to the strategy and implementation process, not to people’s other work.

Want to become an EXPERT? Have a look at our Certified Strategy & Implementation Consultant (CSIC) program. All information and registration on our website, Strategy.Inc. 

#decisionmaking
#strategyexecution
#growthmindset

Toxic management behaviours can destroy all good initiatives. Avoid these seven and replace them by seven Healthy Management Habits.

You’ve probably experienced it—or done it, and often more than once: toxic management behavior. It destroys all good initiatives, kills motivation and engagement, and can lead organizations to the edge of the cliff… or beyond. 

To recognize toxic management behavior, this list of seven types by Jakob Bovin is a useful tool. It describes seven of the most toxic management behaviors we may witness in our organizations. 

And, what is more, he also offers seven alternatives by flipping the behaviors 180 degrees. Let’s call them the Seven Healthy Management Habits. They are: 

EMPOWER EMPLOYEES: Encourage autonomy and trust employees to take initiative, fostering innovation and job satisfaction through ownership of their work.

SHARE INFORMATION TRANSPARENTLY: Keep lines of communication open, sharing necessary information to ensure everyone is aligned and can contribute effectively to the team's goals.

VALUE EMPLOYEES HOLISTICALLY: Recognize employees as individuals with unique contributions, promoting a culture that values personal well-being alongside professional achievements.

SERVE AS A GUIDE: Understand leadership as a behaviour focused on guiding and inspiring others, not just holding a position of authority.

TREAT EVERYONE EQUALLY: Ensure all employees feel valued by offering equal opportunities for recognition and advancement based on merit, fostering a fair and inclusive work environment.

UNITE AND STRENGTHEN THE TEAM: Foster a collaborative environment that encourages teamwork, strengthening trust and cooperation among team members.

BE ACCESSIBLE AND SUPPORTIVE: be available for guidance and feedback, supporting employees' growth and addressing issues promptly to enhance job satisfaction and team cohesion.

The lesson is simple
1. Avoid the toxic management behaviors
2. Replace them by the healthy management habits

→ Subscribe to my Soulful Strategy newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/e_ytzAgU  

#managementdevelopment
#peoplemanagement
#organizationaldevelopment

Being a good strategy consultant is not enough. You also need to be a
good implementation consultant. Why? Because the two are intrinsically linked and part of one and the same process. 

For a long time, strategy and implementation have been treated as two different things. First you generate a new strategy and once that’s done, you implement it. Accordingly, organizations often hired different consultants for the two parts. 

That no longer works. Why? Because strategy and implementation are one and the same process. You might distinguish them conceptually and even pay more attention to one or the other at any point in time, but they remain one process. Splitting them is like separating your head from your body. Possible, but not recommended.

For a consultant, this means you need both strategy and implementation skills. When you’re a team, some can specialize in strategy, others in implementation. But also as a team you need both sets of skills. And if you’re an independent consultant like me, you need both. 

Strategy skills 
• Listening and facilitation skills: to get people’s issues, ideas and insights on the table, individually and in teams 
• Research and analysis skills: to identify and gather key information as well as interpret it and draw conclusions
• Critique and questioning skills: to challenge what people say and make them rethink their assumptions
• Synthesizing and prioritization skills: to craft a structured and clear strategy from fragmented pieces of information
• Writing and formulation skills: to summarize and communicate the strategy in a clear and convincing manner

Implementation skills
• Process and attention management skills: to make sure progress is made and keep people focused and on track • Individual and group coaching skills: to guide, support, and motivate people throughout the journey
• Education and teaching skills: to help people change mindset, skills and behaviors so that they can grow • Feedback and support skills: to help people understand themselves and how to improve step by step
• Culture and people management skills: to keep people on board and together throughout the implementation process

Which of these skills do you already master? And which ones still require development? 

[Featured in The Strategic Leadership Playbook. Originally published in July, 2023]

More of this? For 63 more tools like this, plus step-by-step instructions for using them, get The Strategic Leadership Playbook. See link in the comment below.

#strategyconsulting
#changemanagement
#businessdevelopment

It’s easy to call yourself a master at something, but hard to become one.

As it turns out, there’s a clear, five-stage development process you need to go through.

Already in 1980, Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus wrote a phenomenal article with the title “A five stage model of the mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition.” Ever since, it is a reference model and foundation for how someone develops from novice to master. 

The five stages are: 

• Novice: newbies that start with the basics and that can only follow the rules and repeat what has been shown to them.

• Competence: able to apply what is learned step by step to a specific context and manage as long as no problems pop up.

• Proficiency: able to treat situations as a whole, understand differences, see connections, and deal with exceptions.

• Expertise: able to abstract from specific situations and work in every context, relying largely on intuition.

• Mastery: able to work effortlessly and automatically, being fully absorbed in and by the work delivered. 

This is not just to create some sort of hierarchy or levels. The main relevance is that people learn differently at different stages.


 At the Novice and Competence stages, learning needs to be rule-driven and instruction-based. Learners need a clear process and guidelines that they can understand and follow. 

At the Proficiency and Expertise stages, learning is much more based on personal development and gaining experience in different circumstances. 

And, at the Mastery stage, learning is entirely individual. Rather than listening to a trainer or practicing cases, at this stage the best way to learn is to figure things out yourself. 

I’ve gone through this process to achieve a certain level of mastery in strategy and am at the stage of “figuring it out myself” for quite a while now. Based on that, I’ve also decided I want to help others develop the same level of mastery, at least to the level of Expertise— thereby following the stages and their differences.  

[Featured in The Strategic Leadership Playbook. Originally published in July, 2023]

More of this? For 63 more tools like this, plus step-by-step instructions for using them, get The Strategic Leadership Playbook. See link in the comment below.

#growthmindset
#selfdevelopment
#skillmastery

Change is difficult and many of us want to avoid it. To such an extent that there are no less than fifty (50!) reasons, or I’d rather say excuses, not to change. 

The fascinating thing is that change is on the one hand natural. We have evolution, seasons, day and night, growth, aging, and so on. All of that comes natural and we mostly don’t resist (aging excluded…). 

But, when it concerns organizational change, we often don’t want change. This doesn’t apply to all of us, and also not to all changes, but resistance to change is often seen as a key problem. 

Some reasons for resisting change are valid. If, for example, a new strategy is not well thought-through, or when decisions are clearly bad for an organization, then resisting change may be the right thing to do. 

But, in many cases, the reasons for not wanting to change are not so valid. They reflect fear, uncertainty, lack of confidence or other negative emotions that relate more to change in general than the particular change at hand. 

It is that type of resistance that the 50 reasons in this visual exemplify. They are not genuine reasons for avoiding change, but the typical excuses that you may hear. 

Time for some reflection and identify which of these reasons you have used or are using. 

Generally I am pro change and more often a change initiator than resisting. But, if I have to pick one that I am guilty of, it is “It’s not our problem.” 

There are enough problems in the world that require urgent solutions and the easy way out is to argue that they are not my problem. But of course they are, just as much as they are your problem. Perhaps it is time to change my attitude here. 

Now to you. Which reasons are you using as an excuse—and what will you do about that?. 

If you enjoy this post, you will enjoy my new book, The Strategic Leadership Playbook. See the Featured Items in my profile or the link in the comment below.

Note: I stumbled upon these 50 reasons but have no source that I can credit. If it’s yours, DM me or let me know in a comment

#changemanagement
#growthmindset
#selfdevelopment

The SWOT is one of the most used strategy tools ever. To apply it correctly, there are a couple of things you should know. Here’s how to get the SWOT right. 

For decades, the SWOT analysis has been omnipresent in strategy and other business improvement projects. Its simple two-by-two format and intuitive nature make it versatile and easy to use. 

Or, so it seems. Versatile it is, but not necessarily easy to use. Because, there is one core issue with it that gets overlooked: what is a strength and what a weakness, and what is an opportunity and what a threat, depends on your perspective.

Here’s a simple example. Suppose your company is invested in brewing standard pilsener beer cost-effectively at scale. This is a strength if standard pilsener beer is what you want, but a weakness if a more diversified craft beer portfolio is what you need. 

And is the trend towards more specialty and craft beers an opportunity or a threat? It’s an opportunity if you can respond to it better than your competitors, but a threat if they can respond better. 

So, it all depends. 

This doesn’t mean the SWOT is useless. It means we have to use it smartly to account for the interdependence of its four elements. 

The solution is to stop treating the four boxes separately and creating laundry lists of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. 

Instead, you need to look at S, W, O and T as two pairs of factors that reflect two sides of the same coin. Instead of four boxes, we need a table with three columns:
1. The internal and external factors you look at
2. The positive aspects of the factors you look at
3. The negative aspects of the factors you look at

Strengths and Weaknesses reflect a positive and a negative perspective on an internal factor. In the beer example, the internal factor is the ability to brew standard pilsener cost-effectively at scale. A Strength aspect of it is that it allows you to compete on price and volume with a standard product. A Weakness aspect of this same factor is that it is hard to offer anything else than standard pilsener.

Opportunities and Threats reflect a positive and a negative perspective on an external factor. In the example, the external factor is the trend toward more craft beers. An Opportunity aspect of this is that you may be able to brew one or few craft beers cost-effectively at scale. A Threat aspect is that this trend is gradually making your core business model obsolete. 

If you perform your SWOT analysis in this smart way, you start to understand that strengths and weaknesses are related and can best be understood when considered together—and the same for opportunities and threats.

—

Enhance your strategy skills further? Have a look at our Certified Strategy & Implementation Consultant (CSIC) program. All information and registration on our website, Strategy.Inc.

#businessdevelopment
#organizationalgrowth
#entrepreneurship

Are you consciously competent or unconsciously incompetent? In other words, are you truly competent or do you only think you are? The Four Stages of Competence model helps you find out. 

You know them: people that are fully convinced of their own competence, but that in reality have no idea what they are talking about. They are unconsciously incompetent, which is the first stage of competence development. 

The same applies to organizations. They can be truly competent at something, or they may incorrectly think they are. 

Competences develop in a structured, four stage manner that can be accurately captured with two dimensions: level of consciousness and level of competence.

Level of competence refers to the extent to which you master a certain competence. Level of consciousness refers to how well and accurately you are aware of your own competence. 

Accordingly, there are four categories of competence that apply both at the individual and the organizational level. And they are not only categories—there also is an order in them reflecting how competences generally develop in four stages. They are:

Naive - Unconsciously Incompetent
At this stage you don’t know that you don’t know. You are unaware of what the competence entails. You easily underestimate what it takes and overestimate your own level of competence.

Novice - Consciously Incompetent
An important step ahead, you have come to realize that you lack the competence that you thought you had. You know that you don’t know, which opens the way for learning and growing your skills.

Advanced - Consciously Competent
You know that you know. You are consciously aware of the competence you have and can explain it to others, often because you have spent deliberate effort in developing the competence. 

Expert - Unconsciously Competent
You don’t know that you know. The competence has become your second nature and you master it to such an extent that it comes natural and feels automatic and intuitive. 

The Four Stages of Competence Model can be applied to any competence and any organizational level — from individual to entire organization. Use it to reflect on your (organization’s) competences. 

Which stage are you?

—

If you are serious about developing your strategy and implementation competences along these four stages, then the Certified Strategy & Implementation (CSIC) program may be something for you. See our website Strategy.Inc for all information and registration. 

#selfdevelopment
#skilldevelopment
#peoplemanagement

It is critical to have a good strategy. But what is a good strategy? The SECURE framework helps you assess. Do you have a good, SECURE strategy?

There are many criteria to assess your strategy. To assess it solidly, you can’t simply pick something like profitability or growth. You need a more sophisticated and balanced set of criteria. 

On the other hand, you don’t want to overdo it. Your assessment needs to be simple enough to apply in practice. The SECURE Framework provides the golden mean between simplicity and completeness. This what it stands for: 

S - Significant
Does your strategy maximize your positive impact?
Does your strategy minimize your negative impact?

E - Effective
Are you achieving what you want to achieve?
Are you using everything to its full potential? 

C - Coherent
Is your strategy internally coherent?
Does your strategy fit with the environment?

U - Unique
Is your strategy sufficiently unique?
Can this uniqueness be sustained?

R - Resilient
Is your strategy sufficiently flexible?
Is your strategy sufficiently robust?

E - Engaging
Does your strategy motivate and inspire?
Is your strategy the right thing to do?

If your answer is yes to all or most of the 12 questions it means your strategy fulfills all six criteria and you are doing great. 

If you have few no’s, you have some work to do. Nothing to worry about because no strategy is perfect, but you can improve.

If you have many no’s, it means you have some problems with multiple criteria. You probably need to go back to the drawing table and rework your strategy. 

How SECURE is your strategy?

—-

If you want to develop the skills to create SECURE strategies, then the Certified Strategy & Implementation (CSIC) program may be something for you. See our website Strategy.Inc for all information and registration. 

#strategyconsulting
#impactmanagement
#businessdevelopment

There’s a critical distinction between organizations that are smart and organizations that are wise. These are the seven differences and why they matter. 

We already know for a long time that simply working harder isn’t effective. Therefore, we are advised to work smarter, not harder. We should use our intelligence and creativity to come up with smart solutions that may get the work done with less effort, or deliver higher quality work. 

It’s time for the next step and move on from smart to wise organizations. The challenges of our world—climate change, polarization, war, to name a few—ask for this. 

Moving from smart to wise is not a word game. And it is not simply more of the same. Wise organizations are different. Let’s start with some quick dictionary definitions to see the difference: 

SMART
Cambridge: “intelligent, or able to think quickly or intelligently in difficult situations”
Merriam Webster: “having or showing a high degree of mental ability; intelligent, bright”

WISE
Cambridge: “having or showing the ability to make good judgments, based on a deep understanding and experience of life”
Merriam Webster: “characterized by wisdom: marked by deep understanding, keen discernment, and a capacity for sound judgment”

Along the lines of these definitions, we can define and contrast Smart and Wise Organizations as follows: 

👉 SMART ORGANIZATIONS
Timeline: short to medium-term; 3-5, perhaps 10 years
Skills: intelligence and creativity
Role: problem solver
Focus: self-centered, ego-perspective
Goal: surviving and thriving as organization
Motivators: growth, profit, success 
Stakeholders: current direct stakeholders (customers, employees, shareholders)

👉 WISE ORGANIZATIONS 
Timeline: Long to very long-term; 10 to 100s of years 
Skills: judgment and deep understanding
Role: shepherd
Focus: system-centered, holistic perspective
Goal: surviving and thriving as ecosystem
Motivators: contribution, continuity, responsibility 
Stakeholders: future and indirect stakeholders (community, ecosystem, future generations)

Are you working for a smart or a wise organization?
What can you do to make your organization wiser?

→ Subscribe to my Soulful Strategy newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/e_ytzAgU  

#organizationalgrowth
#foresight
#strategyconsulting

I often get two questions. How unique should my strategy be? And, isn’t simply replicating what others do a valid strategy either? The Five Levels of Uniqueness will help answer these questions.

No strategy is 100% unique. You always have similarities with others, even in your own industry. 

No strategy is 100% identical either. Just the name and location of your company already make you different. 

The interesting part is in between these two extremes. How unique should you be? There’s not a simple answer to this question, but it’s clear that differentiating yourself from the competition is key. 

This is why my very definition of strategy is “an organization’s UNIQUE way of sustainable value creation.” Also for someone influential as Michael Porter, differentiation is the heart of what strategy is all about. 

Why? Because you need to give customers a reason to buy from you. After all, if you are exactly similar to others, why would they go to you? 

You can be very unique. If you disrupt a market or create a new one, you’re one of the few and by definition unique. 

But uniqueness can also be very subtle: a slightly lower price, a different color or size, a different brand feeling, and so on. 

To assess how unique your organization or its products and services should be, it is useful to think of the following five levels of uniqueness:

Level 1. Unique to the ORGANIZATION: This is imaginary uniqueness. It feels unique, but only because it is new for your organization. This first degree of uniqueness should not have your focus. 

Level 2. Unique to the REGION: This is local uniqueness. Others in other regions may do exactly the same as you, but that does not matter so much if your focus is on a particular region (and theirs is not!).

Level 3. Unique to the MARKET: This is segment uniqueness. You focus on a specific part of the market for which your offering is unique. Whether similar offerings in other segments or markets exist is less relevant for you. 

Level 4. Unique to the INDUSTRY: This is sector uniqueness. Your solution stands out in your industry and across markets, even though it may already exist for a while in other industries. 

Level 5. Unique to the WORLD: This is global uniqueness. You’re offering a one of a kind solution that is the only one in the world, or that stands out compared to any other solution in the world. 

One is not better than the other. It all depends on what your ambitions and scope are. If you want to be a disruptive global innovator, Level 5 is what you need. If you are a local player and want to stay one, then Level 2 may be enough. Never fall in the trap of Level 1 though. 

Which Level of Uniqueness does your organization have? And which level should it have?

=== 

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We need more empathy. Climate change, war, polarization, inequality, extinction of species, political turmoil—they largely boil down to one crisis: an empathy crisis.

This is argued by Ex-CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman, in his talk at the Changemakers Spring Event. As he explains, for most of the world’s crises, the solutions are known. Yet, it is the general lack of empathy that causes us not to resolve them. 

I find it hard to disagree. It is our ability and willingness to take the other’s perspective, that of other people, animals, and nature at play here. 

This applies to me as well. Too often I have decided for myself that something “is not my problem.” Which simply says: I look away because I find my personal problems and “problems” more important. Nothing to be proud of, but I am sure you recognize this. 

What is empathy? It is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another” (Merriam-Webster). 

How to activate empathy? I optimistically believe that the capacity for empathy is in virtually all of us. So, the capacity is not the problem. It is the activation of empathy that doesn’t happen. 

According to the Empathy Training Project, empathy consists of five elements: Observe, Tune-In, Relate, Connect, Reach Out. They mean the following:

OBSERVE: Become aware of emotional states in others by paying attention to communication clues.

TUNE-IN: Actively listen to others in an effort to understand their experience.

RELATE: Try to find parallels in your own life experience that will help you identify with someone’s perspective. 

CONNECT: Share in someone’s feelings by walking in their shoes.

REACH OUT: Respond appropriately to a person through acts of compassion. 

While these five elements, and also definitions of empathy, are often focused on people, I think we can easily extend it to any other living entity. Because also in relation to animals and nature we can observe, tune-in, relate, connect and reach out. 

So, here’s one thing to do in the coming week: show more empathy. And then continue to do so every day thereafter. I will do the same. 

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You’ve heard the term, probably many times: ESG. It stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. Interesting, but what does that really mean? A brief clarification.

Originally a framework for the assessment of risks and opportunities in investing, ESG is increasingly becoming the dominant framework for managing organizations’ sustainability.

ESG relates closely to two other sustainability frameworks, the Triple Bottom Line (TBL, 3Ps, People, Planet and Profit) and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

One of the reasons for the success of the ESG framework is that it stands right in between these two other frameworks in terms of coverage and complexity. The TBL is often seen as too simple, while the SDGs are so broad in scope that they are hard to take as a basis for managing the sustainability of an organization. 

ESG is still broad in scope and implementation can be complex as well, but it is more structured and focused, and as such is often seen as the ideal middle ground. 

This is what the three components of ESG mean: 

🟢 Environmental: Factors related to the positive and negative impact an organization has on its natural environment. This includes greenhouse gas emissions, resilience against climate-related risks, and use of natural resources.

🔴 Social: Factors related to the positive and negative impact an organization has on its social environment. This includes labor conditions, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), employee well-being, and impact on the community.

🔵 Governance: Factors related to the positive and negative impact an organization has through its governance. This includes transparency, compliance to rules and regulations, governance structure, and privacy and security.

Underneath these three components there’s a host of details that I cannot get into in this short post. But, there’s plenty of information available on the web and various software tools are offered to take a deep dive.

What I want to end with, is a brief outline of the different ways to use ESG. Here are four ways to use it: 

Greenwashing: not appropriate and it is one of the criticisms of ESG, but it happens: ESG is being used for window dressing and polishing the corporate image. 
Risk management: along the lines of its original way of usage, ESG can be used to identify investment, business or other types of risk
Opportunity identification: a more positive approach to use ESG is to use it for identifying commercially interesting opportunities for new business or marketing
True change: most true to the need it addresses, ESG can be used as a structure for true and positive change in an organization along all three dimensions. 

What do you use ESG for?

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Strategy and Leadership Consultant | Global Top 20 LinkedIn Creator | No-Nonsense Collaborator, Educator, Mentor and Author | Enabling Leaders to Improve Through Strategic Insight and Guided Execution |

Strategy should be cold and rational, about the facts, right? Not necessarily. And there is certainly much more to strategy than just that. Based on what I’ve seen over the past 20 years, if there is one thing missing, and that should get a place center stage, it is empathy. 

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#businessgrowth
#empathy

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