Leadership and Strategy in the Bubble

I just commented on a post by Scott Berinato over at washingtonpost.com (here).  Per my comment, it was a strong, link-rich post that pulled together a lot of threads.
As promised, I did take a closer look at Umair Haque’s piece on “Saving Strategy from the Strategists” (here).  I still think he’s seeing a strategy disconnect that isn’t there, [...]

Is Starbucks’ stuck in the middle?

Thoughts after tag surfing….  A lot of the comments on the Starbucks store closings claim that the 600 closings are driven by location mistakes.  The recent internal memo from Howard Schultz listing the stores to close in July 2008 headlined the “poor real estate decisions” made (story here).  There has been a lot of talk of cannibalization (here) [...]

Initiative success measures — poll results to date

The results for the poll are still tallying — it is still open and the link is in a widget on the upper right-hand side of this page.  We only have 11 responses, however, so if folks want to skew them there’s still time!
POLL RESULTS as of 3 July — What is the most important [...]

Training and qualifying sponsors

For those who need to educate their sponsors, the approach of the UK’s Home Office might at least inspire your next efforts (here, the syllabus is here).  The content looks very meaty.
This approach may only work in the public sector — I’m not sure how many senior folks in my organization would sit still for [...]

Making sure that your deliverables’ benefits are realized

With all my recent scope management posts lately, here’s a timely post on benefits realization (here) at John Gough’s iJourneys blog (here).  I like the theme of his post, that “…benefit realisation does not start when the project ends.”   I also second his point that IT sees itself as apart from the “business” and [...]

Re-opened: Initiative Success Factor Poll

I got some feedback that it was closed.  Oops…I had forgotten that I had arbitrarily closed it after one week.  Sorry.
Here it is again.  I’ll also maintain a link in the upper right sidebar.

Reminder: Initiative/Project Success Poll

I’ve only gotten a few responses to the poll of what makes an initiative successful (here).  Maybe the topic is lame, of course.  Also, I’ve discovered that I can’t create “sticky” posts, so my poll has dropped down the blog. 
As a workaround, I’ve started keeping my active polls in a widget on the upper right-hand [...]

Measuring Innovation — Boston Consulting Group Survey

Well, since I took a potshot at BCG in an earlier post (here), I should give them kudos where appropriate.  I had a chance to chat with Harold Sirkin last year when BCG did some work for us (his book on innovation models with James Andrew is (here). 
Measuring innovation is a very knotty topic, so it [...]

Poll: What makes an initiative successful?

The project success topic I blogged on earlier seemed like a good subject for my first polldaddy poll.  It should be multiple choice and allow free text entries.  I’ll compile the results in a week.

Challenges of Strategy Articulation

Jonathan has a good post (here) deconstructing the “strategy management” mess (perpetuated by someone on the “other side” here).  His blog also has some great posts on strategy management itself (here) and on cascading (here).  I like his simple “formulation, articulation, execution” strategy management process breakdown.
What I’ve most struggled with is strategy articulation.  Jonathan notes [...]