Strategic Planning

McKinesy on Strategic Planning:

1° Creating prepared minds

2° Enabling creative accidents

- Bottom up strategy experimentation

- Top down strategic initiatives

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From Strategy to Operations:- The curious case of Benjamin Button....

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The title sounds strange enough, but when you are subjected to a long movie, you ought to think of strange things. 3 hours gone but an important analogy made: Between Benjamin Button & the process of creating operational plans from strategic plans in order to execute your strategy! The film shows Brad Pitt being born as an old man and living his life growing younger. He relates events which for him had already happened. Now imagine you, as an org anization, are standing at the end of a long time line - you have already achieved your strategy. Imagine, how did you do it? What actions did you take? What resources did you secure and how you deployed them? Which products/markets/segments did you serve? How did you secure finance? What was the reaction of the market & shareholders? And many such questions depending on the industry. Ask these questions in a stepwise fashion starting from the end. What was the last significant thing you had to do just before reaching the goal. Put ...
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Cross cultural observations

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I was just reflecting on some of my experiences of working with people of different nationalities. In the past few years during my employment, I got a chance to work with various people from around the world. I must have worked closely with atleast 15 nationalities until now. And this has been a real eye opener to the kind of cross cultural team issues which might face an organization. Even in daily life, its just so exciting to see the reactions of people from different nationalities & cultures on the same issue..... You can be almost sure that in a case team of 6 people with 6 nationalities; you will get radically different reactions on the same issue being handled. That's when we realise that 'Diversity' is not just a buzzword; you have to experience it to know its power. If you want to be a global organization, you need to have a diverse and global workforce: It's as simple as that! Just compiling a brief summary of what I observed. Some of...
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Aspirations of the herd....

Few years ago and until last year, it was the time of software engineers. Every Ram, Shyam and Ghanshyam in the neighourhood wanted to be a software engineer because of the attraction of high bucks  and trips abroad. These  Ghanshyams  didn’t know where their own mind or strength lies. They just felt happy to follow the aspirations of the herd. They spoke excitedly about latest trends in open source, neural networks and artificial intelligence. The wave was so intense in the period of 1998 that software engineers were seen as demigods. This phenomenon lasted quite long until 2005/06. Then the herd collectively changed its mind and thought that oh, actually finance is also a good profession, isn’t it? Now the same Ghanshyam in the neighbourhood started talking about balance sheets, hedge funds & private equity. He still didn’t know where his own mind or strength lies. He was again following the herd. It became muted after the GFC. Then it was the turn of Medicine ...
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