Ideally, you will develop strategic response to your place in the corporate lifecycle to identify new paths of strategic renewal. You will look for new growth curves that can be started early enough to replace declining products and you will try to identify whole new curves that will take the organisation to new levels of growth as a whole.

Max McKeown

Categorized in : Trying Growth Curves

Strategy and culture should have breakfast together.

Max McKeown

should-have together culture

A great strategy meeting is a meeting of minds.

Max McKeown

strategy meetings mind

The real heart of strategy is the strategist.

Max McKeown

strategy real heart

Following the rules of your industry will only get you so far.

Max McKeown

provoking thought-provoking following

All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.

Max McKeown

adaptation successful

Change is not overcoming inertia as much as it is redirecting, guiding, tweaking what already is and what has already happened. We must believe that we can make choices and that those choices can alter the future.

Max McKeown

choices overcoming believe

Dont be a life spectator.. take the plunge.

Max McKeown

plunge spectators

The task of the strategist and leadership team is to reduce uncertainty in the areas that they can directly influence in order to pursue attractively difficult objectives.

Max McKeown

tasks team order

Change is inevitable, progress is not.

Max McKeown

change-is-inevitable inevitable progress

We need to move from comparative advantage to perpetual advantage.

Max McKeown

advantage moving needs

Innovation is new stuff that is made useful.

Max McKeown

innovation made stuff

Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You’ll know that you’re getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done.

Max McKeown

senior ideas thinking

Strategists who don’t take time to think are just planners.

Max McKeown

time-to-think take-time thinking

With a clever strategy, each action is self-reinforcing. Each action creates more options that are mutually beneficial. Each victory is not just for today but for tomorrow.

Max McKeown

victory self clever

If you change the rules of the market, you can be more successful than your competitors.

Max McKeown

competitors successful ifs

Brilliant strategy is the best route to desirable ends with available means.

Max McKeown

strategy brilliant mean

Strategy is about shaping the future.

Max McKeown

shaping-the-future strategy business

The smart strategist allows strategy to be shaped by events. Good reactions can make great strategy. Strategy involves competition of goals, and the risk is the difference between those goals and the ability of the organization to achieve them. So part of the risk is created by the strategy.

Max McKeown

smart differences organization

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

Max McKeown

effort energy moving

Our need for innovation has shifted power closer to the source of that power-Us. We are the future.

Max McKeown

innovation source needs