I recently had two interesting conversations about financial context, and the way leaders think about revenue and opportunity. In the first case, the executive team was presenting a case study about a new service offering. This new business initiative was worth around $2M in revenue – frankly a sum that is dwarfed by their core business, but it has massive potential, and is likely to scale as a significant part of their 5-year strategy.
Tag Archives: organisational strategy
Reading the conditions
How do you set your future agenda – is it based on personal objectives, or do you research and run tests? How do you go about benchmarking in your specialty or industry? Whichever way you keep score, it’s all about reading the conditions, so you can obtain a view of current state and your desired future and, with these assessments in hand, plan how to get there.
The illusion of certainty
The lifetime customer, the iron-clad supplier, the legislated right to operate – it can all change at the stroke of a pen … or the start of a pandemic. I had an interesting discussion with a prospect recently about starting or waiting. He’s looking to double his significant mid-tier business over the next 3-5 years and he’d also like to significantly increase the profit margin to 20% rather than the current 10%.
Are you playing the game or imposing yourself?
Success in professional sports this year has been not only about survival of the fittest, but survival of those able to adapt to change – just as we have experienced in business. Spring is high season for sports competition here in Australia – including Australian Football League (AFL) finals, interstate rugby play-offs and thoroughbred horse racing carnivals. So you get a good look at who’s best and who makes up the rest.
What are you here to do?
Can you communicate your organisational strategy in one word, or a single phrase? It’s something I advocate strongly during client strategy workshops. The idea is to have a memorable, simple rallying cry, such as IBM’s ‘Think’, Apple’s competitively positioned ‘Think Differently’ or Southwest Airlines ‘Wheels Up’. We all know how focused each of these organisations have been around these tight themes.