Entries by Geoff Wilson

Are your people uninspired? Maybe it’s time to hang the DJ.

Your strategy is supposed to inspire.  Have you forgotten? What’s the purpose of your strategic plan? The possibilities are endless.  Some might say that the sole purpose is to “enhance shareholder value.”  I’d argue that this old trope is no longer the gold standard.  Some adhere to the stakeholder model…which might be closer.  Regardless of […]

It’s what you give that matters

How much do you focus on what you give vs. what you think you do? “It’s not what you got, it’s what you give / it ain’t the life you choose, it’s the life you live.” – What You Give, Tesla (the rock band) Have you ever met an executive that focuses a LOT on the skills […]

New year, new you?

Renewal is the word to embrace at the start of the year. 2020. Two thousand twenty. For those of us born and reared prior to the turn of the century, just the concept of 2020 is striking…it’s as if we are living in the future. The turn of the decade brings to mind an important […]

5 ways strategy deployment fails

Deploying your strategy isn’t easy, here are 5 reasons deployments fail. The reality of strategic management is that it requires having a strategy and actually managing with the strategy as the touchstone. The first part isn’t easy…plenty of management “stories” masquerade as strategy without actually being founded on real choices about what to do and […]

What Andrew Luck just taught us about protecting top talent

Andrew Luck’s retirement shows that if you don’t protect the talent in your organization, you won’t have it for long. Andrew Luck announced his retirement Saturday night.  Luck, the intriguingly smart and fantastically gifted quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts, basically explained that the constant cycle of injury and recovery he has gone through for the […]

The waiting is the hardest part

There is such a thing as strategic patience… I have a confession to make: I’m impatient.  It’s a fundamental trait that I have wrestled with for years.  I’d love to think that I’m not alone and that it’s okay because other people are impatient, too, but the reality is that impatience is not okay. Urgency […]

How do you respond to adversity?

Things are going to go sideways…so how do you respond? No strategy survives contact with the enemy. That’s a timeless truth that, while written for a military crowd, is valid in all parts of life. If you don’t like that one, how about this one:  “Man plans…God laughs.” In other words, no matter how much […]

When one more is too many, what do you do?

Focus need not be only about doing less. Focus is a frequent theme in our work.  Often, action-oriented teams do what they do, which is to take on more and more “things” until the collection of things is basically overwhelming. When organizations place one management layer of achievers on top of another management layer of […]

The strategic executive’s enduring dilemma

The hardest part about giving excellent advice is the hardest part about being an executive. One of the real disasters of the consulting profession is the consultant who really, sincerely, thinks he has it all figured out.  He’s the guy for whom no problem is unsolvable.  Usually, the advice on complex topics is distilled into […]