One challenge with standard strategic planning approaches is people quickly become too familiar with the standard strategic planning questions, i.e., What are our strengths and weaknesses? Who are our main competitors? What are the threats and opportunities in the next few years? Familiarity breeds less attention to probing every aspect of the questions.
This phenomenon is compounded by people who having been at one company or in one industry for any length of time. If people are entering strategic planning with that type of history, they likely know ALL the standard and expected answers to the standard strategic planning questions.
The result is you get a standard strategic plan that falls far short of creating strategic impact.
Strategic Thinking Exercises and Creating Strategic Impact
The approach The Brainzooming Group takes with clients in developing strategy is to twist the standard question areas into strategic thinking exercises with a greater likelihood of yielding new, unexpected and insightful ideas.
When you have new ideas versus the standard answers, you have a foundation for greater business success.
As you work on plans for next year, here are a few of the strategic thinking exercises we use as variations on the same old strategic planning to ensure we are creating strategic impact for our clients.
What are our opportunities?
- Strategic Thinking Exercise – 7 Ideas to Turn a SWOT Analysis into a SWOOT
- A Spoonful of Unconventional Makes the Conventionalism Go Down
- Strategic Connections – 3 Tips for Identifying More Opportunities
What are our threats?
- 3 Strategic Thinking Exercises to Spot Emerging Competitors
- 15 Ways Whoever Is Going to Disrupt Your Market Isn’t Like You
- Strategic Thinking Exercise – Black Swan Events in Your Plan
- 11 Strategic Questions for Disruptive Innovation in Markets
What are our strengths and weaknesses?
What benefits do we deliver?
Who are our competitors?
What trends will shape the future?
What should we do?
What should be our priorities?
Give these a try and see what new strategic insights you generate! – Mike Brown
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