“Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy. You might know how to succeed, but more importantly, what’s your plan to succeed?” – Jim Rohn, American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker

40 Strategy Stories, Finding Balance to Your Strategy – Volume 2020:1

March 25, 2020

Strategy – Every email will include research, facts and/or best practices on designing and executing strategic plans. These concepts will be useful for your work and personal life. As my friend David Solomon used to say, “Facts are our Friends.”

Working with Cascade Strategy, we saw a lot of different types of Strategic Frameworks. In 2003 and 2013, two studies verified that the Balanced Scorecard was the most widely adopted framework. The Balanced Scorecard was created in 1987 by Art Schneiderman at Analog Devices. Not surprisingly, it was made popular by the book called The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S Kaplan and David P Norton. This has been used by for profit and not-for-profit alike. Well-known companies that have used the framework include Wells Fargo, Apple and Verizon. The Balanced Scorecard is a mixture of Financial and Non-Financial Measures towards a target value. The four quadrants of the balance scorecard typically include:

1. Financial or Stewardship (Financial Performance)
2. Customer & Stakeholder (Customer Value, Satisfaction and/or Retention)
3. Internal Process (Efficiency and Quality)
4. Organizational Capacity or Learning & Growth (Employees, Infrastructure, Technology)

Pros –

• Focus on Strategic Agenda
• Selection of a small number of data items to monitor
• A mix of financial and non-financial data
• 62% for Strategy, 48% for Operational use

Cons –

• Management should be a part of the process and not delegate because the framework is standardized
• Limited statistical data that the framework is THE reason why the strategic plan works
• Bias is on financial stakeholders
• Can we truly be balanced?

Personal / Story Insight – This will include a brief story / insight on how applying strategic concepts can work (or fail).

If you are wondering why the market took such a beating, a 2009 study showed that 70% of public companies experiencing a revenue stall lose more than half their market capitalization.

Adam Hartung, Create Marketplace Disruption

I also experienced this in some of my stocks over the past month. Not so fun.

Strategic Books – Latest update / insight on recommended articles and books.

Predictably Irrational, The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, MIT Professor Dan Ariely

My current audiobook is read by Simon Jones on Audible. With the most recent changes in the world, I downloaded four books on human psychology and the history of US crashes. This book was written in 2008 but the concepts are still true and a bit humorous how we react to different situations. Much of the discussion is on behavioral economics and how we react to nearly everything is based on comparison to something else. His research validates that our views and actions are biased relativity.

For example:

If we were to buy a book for $34 and we heard that we could pay $27 for the book at the store down the street; most people would drive 15 minutes to save $7.

However, if we were buying a TV for $249 and we heard we could pay $242 for the TV at the store down the street; most people would not drive the 15 minutes, to save the same $7.

Predictably Irrational

Humor Quote – One of my favorite websites is www.demotivators.com which breathes sarcasm. Please forgive me. I find this website laugh out loud funny. Check out this quote for Believe in Yourself. I know some of you are thinking of me in regards to this; but at least you have a visual now.

Links to Top Articles / Ideas / Websites – This will have from one to many links to articles and ideas that you may want to consider reading:

Hard to avoid this. Coronavirus, COVID-19. I have found the following website to be more fact-based:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Senate Deal reached on $2 Trillion Stimulus Package and What it Includes for SMB’s

Cash is King even for the Largest Companies, Wall Street Journal

Stock market link

Recommendation – Every email will have a recommendation for a partner, service or product that may make a difference for you.

Tom Wright and my friends at Cascade Strategy have created a COVID-19 response to mitigate business challenges with this blog and a webinar. Here is the blog link. Check it out.

Give this a couple of weeks to blend into your routine. If you like it, share it. Send me your comments and thoughts and suggestions. If you don’t, you may unsubscribe at any time. Sign-up here!

PS – If you did not get the pre-blog email, here is the Saddle Up beginning.