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Strategic planning

The 10 Commandments of Effective Growth Strategy

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“Business principles are only as good as the practices that back them up.”

– Chip Conley

Developing effective growth strategy is never easy.

The good news: While it is difficult, it is not impossible.

Fortunately, there are a few time-tested and proven growth principles. If you follow them, they will reduce your up-front time and effort while significantly increasing the chances of success.

Over the span of many years in growth leadership and consulting roles, I have enjoyed great success by following these simple, yet powerful, fundamentals. Now you can too.

If you follow these guiding principles, in sequential order, you will have the building blocks to create an effective growth strategy for your organization.

The 10 Commandments

Most of us are aware of the Ten Commandments, the set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship that play a fundamental role in Judaism and Christianity.

While not quite as enduring or carved in stone like the original Ten Commandments, I believe these ten growth strategy principles can be very useful and informative for leaders seeking to grow their organization.

Here they are:

1 – Know Who You Are

This growth strategy commandment is first for a reason.

Why? In order for effective strategic planning to take place, you have to know who you are. In this context, “you” is referring to the organization.

This is your starting point.

Knowing the Core Ideology (Mission, Values, and Purpose) of your organization, and ensuring they are in alignment with your product(s)/service(s) and brand, is crucial for effective growth strategy.

If these elements are not in alignment, your growth initiative is highly likely to fail before it ever gets to see the light of day.

2 – Know Where You Want to Go

Every leadership team has dreams and aspirations for where they want to take the organization. Knowing your Envisioned Future (Vision, and Long-term Goals) is vitally important for effective strategic planning and execution.

As the old saying goes, if you don’t know where you are going, then how will you know when you get there?

Having clarity around your desired future state will provide focus, inspiration, and a convenient measuring stick to track your progress.

3 – Have a Plan

Once you know your starting point, and your intended destination, you are then in an excellent position to plot out a path forward for the organization.

In strategic planning, I call this stage the growth strategy thesis.

It is the product of all your understanding, insight, and best thinking about how you will navigate the Strategic Gap that exists between where you are today and your destination.

Your growth strategy thesis and plan become the roadmap you will use to reach the long-term goals of the organization.

Why is it a thesis? Because it is your best guess as to the path forward. The truth is you will not know until you start executing. Your strategy thesis is what you and your team are going to follow until you learn otherwise from market feedback. Then you can listen and pivot as required in order to keep moving towards your long-term goals.

There are many distractions for growth leaders when creating a strategic plan. The most successful ones focus on the fundamentals first:

  • Vision before strategy.
  • Strategy before tactics.
  • Focus on the big rocks first, in priority order.
  • Walk before you run.

4 – Get Real

Growth leaders need to practice a special kind of honesty.

This involves much more than just being truthful in our business dealings. Growth leaders need to have radical candor in assessing their organization, its product(s)/service(s), competitors, and the marketplace.

I call this getting real.

It plays out like this: If you are not real about your organization and the environment, then you are very likely to be unpleasantly surprised in the future.

Many of us have been witness to this kind of dangerous thinking in the business world. A few common examples:

  • “We don’t have any competitors.”
  • “Our customers love us.”
  • “ACME Company isn’t anything to worry about.”
  • “Every company needs our solution.”
  • “Our Widget is better than anything else out there.”

Successful growth leaders start their journey with deep introspection about the organization and the solutions they deliver to the market. After this growth assessment, they will also spend a lot of time out in the market gaining better Situational Awareness about the market(s) where they compete.

This level of honesty is the most important part of strategic planning. You have to put everything (good, bad, and ugly) on the table so that you can objectively evaluate it and plan around it.

Do not try to put lipstick on a pig…that generally only makes things worse.

Get real. If your product or service is crap, fix it. If you do not have the right team, make a change.

5 – Know Your Target (Market)

In addition to having clarity around long-term organizational goals, growth strategists also must strive to gain clarity around the target market for their solutions.

This often begins with market segmentation and analysis. Then, thinking deeply about where the organization can effectively compete and win.

These insights are often documented in the form of personas and an ideal client profile (ICP in growth parlance). Having consensus on this information is crucial in order for go-to-market teams to be able to do their jobs.

With personas and ICPs, marketing teams can define positioning and messaging, and develop appropriate lead generation campaigns. Sales teams can identify qualified prospects and know how best to close sales.

6 – Understand Your Buyer’s Journey

Knowing your target is not enough.

An equally important, and often overlooked, part of understanding your target market is to understand how prospects buy. This so-called “buyer’s journey” is the key to unlocking the puzzle of how to gain more sales, quicker.

Most go-to-market (GTM) organizations get this completely wrong.

Their mistake is to think that the prospects they have identified as ideal targets will fall into line and proceed stage-by-stage through the sales funnel that the sales organization has carefully designed. This is hardly ever how it happens in the wild.

Buyers are doing their own research, developing their own solutions, and working through internal approvals all outside of the view of sellers. In fact‚ Gartner research finds that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase‚ they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers.

They are on their own buyer’s journey.

Smart sellers attempt to understand as much as possible about this journey, and then line up their sales process with the buyer’s buying process.

An important takeaway: Marketing enables sales. If you understand the buyer’s journey, you can then map the right marketing activities, educational content, and sales activities, to help coach and move the buyer along their buyer’s journey.

7 – Define Your Unique Selling Proposition

There are many ways to define value for a customer. However, one thing is true: If your prospect does not find value in what you are trying to sell them, they will not buy. Period.

In growth strategy, this is called a unique selling proposition (USP) – a clear statement that describes the benefit of your product or service, how you solve your customer’s needs and what distinguishes you from the competition.

Developing this can be a powerful sales tool. The absolute best sales superpower is to be unique. If there is no comparison, then you are free to compete on providing the best value for the client.

As one of my wise marketing mentors once shared with me, “an ounce of different is worth a pound of same.”

8 – Know Your Route(s) to Market

A crucial part of every growth plan is to know and understand your route(s) to market.

An organization can consider many different sales channels as part of their growth strategy. Selling directly into their target market(s), whether it is B2B or B2C, is the most common. Other channels include partners, wholesale, retail, OEM, etc.

Knowing your route to market is a fundamental requirement in order to define effective growth strategy.

In the earlier Buyer’s Journey commandment, I shared that marketing enables sales. Ensuring that marketing and sales are in alignment, and working in concert, is crucially important no matter what channel(s) you ultimately decide to use.

9 – Build a Scalable GTM Infrastructure

The ninth commandment is about building a solid foundation for growth.

We all know that you need a strong foundation in order to construct an enduring building. It is the same for organizations.

The GTM infrastructure for the organization includes people, process, technology, and data/analytics. Growth leaders must ensure the GTM infrastructure is both capable and scalable.

In the growth mix, technology can be a force multiplier if the core GTM tech stack (website, CRM, marketing automation, social media) are integrated. The goal of every growth leader is to make sure that marketing, sales, and client success are all working together effectively.

An added bonus to tech integration is that is allows us to measure everything. The ability to track and measure key metrics allows growth leaders to build a predictable revenue model, gain clarity on marketing ROI, and ultimately make intelligent decisions on how to optimize and grow the business.

10 – Develop a Balanced Marketing Plan

In order to grow the business, it is vital to have a balanced marketing plan. A consistent cadence of outbound and inbound tactics will help drive growth.

It is worth repeating this important concept: Marketing enables sales.

Marketing is an expense. For many organizations, it is one of the largest budget line items. However, with the proper metrics and accountability in place, it should also demonstrate enough ROI to justify the cost.

Unfortunately, marketing is often viewed as a one-time event. In order to drive consistent growth, you have to commit to an ongoing go-to-market process and a long-term plan. An intelligent balance of marketing tactics, consistently executed, is always the best path forward.

Avoid spreading your marketing efforts too thinly – if you are budget challenged it is much better to do fewer things, but do them well. You can invest more in marketing as your grow.

Go Forth and Conquer

Remember, there is no silver bullet for growth.

Growth leaders can dramatically improve their odds of success by embracing the wisdom of these 10 growth commandments and making sure the right team is in place. Some may find value in engaging a CMO to guide them on their journey.

-Onward

Putting Lipstick on a Pig!

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“I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone of business.”

– Harvey S. Firestone

Years ago, in the midst of a long discussion about our product roadmap and where we should invest scarce resources, one of my marketing mentors asked me a profound question:

“Do you know what you get when you put lipstick and a pink tutu on a pig?”

This odd question had the desired effect, as it stopped the conversation dead in its tracks.

Sensing a trap, I paused to think.

Playing a few alternative answers over in my mind, I answered with the obvious: “A pig.”

This answer was met with a broad grin, a slap of his hand on the conference room table, and the response: “You are partially correct. But it is no longer just a pig…you have now also made it angry, very confused and pissed off by forcing it to wear lipstick and a tutu!”

The moral of this story was clearly not about how to avoid angering pigs – although that does sound like good advice!

Rather, this simple parable illustrated that we have to confront the immediate challenges in front of us, we cannot cover them hoping they will go away. Things generally only get worse if we try to mask them.

Fix the Issue Instead

To put “lipstick on a pig” means making superficial or cosmetic changes to a product in a futile effort to disguise its fundamental failings.

When you read this simple description, then the fundamental flaw of the strategy becomes readily apparent. A few relevant examples for growth leaders:

  • If your product or service sucks, fix it first. Your present and future customers will thank you.
  • Be honest in your marketing and sales efforts. Do not lie. Do not mislead your prospects. If your marketing value proposition does not match the actual value proposition delivered from a sale, then you are creating potentially fatal brand issues.
  • If your go-to-market infrastructure is not ready to scale, do not ramp up growth marketing and sales until you have built the foundation for growth.
  • If you do not have the right people on the bus, sitting in the right seats, make the necessary changes. Quickly.

The Connection to Strategic Planning

A fundamental requirement for effective strategic planning to take place is complete transparency and honesty.

Many planning exercises go sideways when growth leaders and/or their teams either cannot or will not confront reality.

This often manifests itself in product or service issues, or organizational problems, that should be addressed first, before any investment in growth takes place.

I always try to follow a priority sequence of steps to kick off every growth strategy engagement. This discovery process has proven to be very helpful in avoiding the dangers of putting lipstick on a pig:

  1. First, make an honest assessment of the organization, and its leadership. Ask yourself – Is there a willingness/desire to change/improve in order to drive growth? Are we willing to invest the time and resources required? Are we committed to the effort, even if it means some pain and suffering along the way?
  2. Next, is the team willing and able to put all the issues, problems, challenges on the table? If “yes” – great, move on. If “no” – dig in further before proceeding.
  3. Third, do we have good situational awareness of our client base and chosen market(s)? You must cast a wide net and examine many perspectives to make sure you are not missing something important, or setting the organization up to being blindsided.
  4. Take a long, hard look at your answers to items (2) and (3) above. I call this “getting real” and it is not easy. Growth leaders and their teams must be honest about the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, and the product(s) and/or services(s) they are selling. You must practice radical candor. Not every team is willing or able to “call their baby ugly!”
  5. Finally, before you start in on developing your growth strategy and plan, you need to triage any issues. Before proceeding, make the decisions to fix, dump, or accept as-is the issues you identified.

Taking the time to do this assessment and triage up front, will yield dramatically better outcomes for your growth strategy and plan.

Conclusion

The key takeaway for growth leaders: Never put lipstick on a pig.

Fix the issue(s) instead.

Then go to market.

-Onward

Show Up and Do the Work

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“The only easy day was yesterday” – US Navy SEALs motto

I recently had an interesting conversation with a prospective client. The topic was about updating the go-to-market strategy for their organization. While the concept of the new strategy I proposed was straightforward (the best ones usually are!), the execution was more complex and would require making some changes to their existing approach.

After some conversation, it became clear this CEO was fishing for a quick fix solution without any disruption. He wanted all the benefits of a new, transformative approach to the market. However, he was reluctant to invest the time, money, or resources to get there.

He wanted the benefits of growth, without making any changes to the status quo, and without doing the hard work.

This reminded me of a fundamental business lesson that applies to leaders of any organization.

As Woody Allen famously said, “eighty percent of success is showing up.”

The rest is just hard work.

No Shortcuts

The real secret to success in life is quite simple.

It does not matter if the topic is family, friends, your job, or executing a strategic plan.

There is no magic pill.

There are no shortcuts. (At least not lasting ones.)

The same fundamental rule of effort applies – you have to show up. And, even more importantly, you have to do the work.

You must be in the game, playing the game, in order to have any chance of winning the game. You cannot be on the sidelines and have any hope of success.

Connection to VUCA Strategic Planning

The harsh reality is that many strategic plans fail.

It is not because these strategic plans are necessarily bad, but rather because they are not executed.

Why? There are many reasons. Leaders and their teams get distracted. Competitors make noise in the market. Customers have problems. Employees need attention. Crises and distractions abound. Life interrupts…

As a result, the brilliant strategic plans that leaders and their teams invested a lot of time and money in developing are tossed aside. Hopefully to resurface when “we have more time.”

Sad but true.

A strategic plan is useless unless someone (or some team) shows up, and then does something. This bias to action is critical. By developing a robust VUCA Strategic Plan and following an effective Management Cycle cadence, leaders can stack the odds in their favor and ensure success.

A Dieting Analogy

Like many who have been mostly housebound during the global pandemic I have put on a couple of extra pounds (a good friend of mine, who has also put on some extra weight, calls it his COVID 19!).

After doing some research on popular diets, I discovered a dirty little secret.

Wait for it…

Nearly all diets work!

That’s right. The actual diet is not the problem. The real problem is the dieter. Most of us lack the discipline to buy and prepare the right food, to exercise appropriately, and, more importantly, the motivation to stick with the discipline of the diet.

Much like strategic planning. We have to show and do the hard work. There is no shortcut.

It really is that simple.

-Onward

Dealing with VUCA Forces

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“Expect the unexpected.” – Bear Bryant

We are accelerating into a new and unpredictable VUCA business environment.

The disruptive forces of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are playing out across almost every company and industry.

Against this backdrop, VUCA has proven to be a great organizing framework to help strategic leaders think about potential new threats. However, I have noticed that many organizations struggle to identify VUCA threats and translate them into actionable inputs as they are making their strategic plans.

In this article we’ll start to break down the challenge and work towards an approach for dealing with VUCA forces.

What is VUCA?

The United States Army War College was one of the first organizations to embrace the concept of VUCA, after the so-called Cold War ended. Military planners began to worry about the radically different, unstable, and completely unfamiliar international security environment that had emerged. They coined the acronym VUCA to describe it:

  • Volatile – Change that is rapid and unpredictable in its nature and extent. The challenge is unexpected or unstable, and may be of unknown duration. However, it is not necessarily hard to understand; knowledge about it is often available.
  • Uncertain – The present is unclear and the future is uncertain. Despite a lack of other information, the event’s basic cause and effect are known. Change is possible but not a given.
  • Complex – Many different, interconnected factors come into play, with the potential to cause chaos and confusion. The situation has many interconnected parts and variables. Some information is available or predictable, but the volume or nature of it can be overwhelming to process.
  • Ambiguous – There is a lack of clarity or awareness about situations. Causal relationships are completely unclear. No precedents exist; you face “unknown unknowns.”

For simplicity, let’s look at each element in isololation:

  • In a purely volatile (but not uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, there is a lot of fast, but predictable change. 
  • On the other hand, in a purely uncertain (but not volatile, complex and ambiguous) world, it is hard to tell how things will develop.
  • In a purely complex (but not volatile, uncertain and ambiguous) world, things are hard to untangle and understand.
  • Finally, in a purely ambiguous (but not volatile, uncertain and complex) world, things are just hard to discern at all.

We see proof of these every day.

Unfortunately, out in the wild these dark forces do not typically present themselves in isolation. Rather, they can come at undesirable times, and in a variety of combinations and sequences. All of which makes the job of leaders infinitely more challenging.

Why is Understanding VUCA So Important?

While its origins lie in military planning, the concept of VUCA transfers perfectly to the world of business. Especially now.

Many experts predict that volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are going to become even more prevalent in the future. To manage teams and create strategic plans for organizations in this “new normal” era of disruption, leaders need to be aware of the changes that this kind of environment can cause.

The turbulent and unpredictable VUCA forces of change will affect all organizations, at all levels. This type of environment poses many threats to an organization, including:

  • Overwhelming your team and making them anxious or nervous about the future.
  • Sapping their energy and motivation to take action.
  • Throwing uncertainty into their career paths.
  • Causing skills to become obsolete and forcing constant retraining.
  • Consuming large amounts of time and resources to understand and combat.
  • Increasing the complexity of making decisions, and the chances of making mistakes.
  • Slowing down the decision-making process.
  • Causing short-term thinking, and knee-jerk reactions.
  • Jeopardizing strategic long-term projects, developments and innovation.

As a result, we need to develop new skills, practice new behaviors, and take better approaches to manage the threat. If this environment affects your industry or organization, you have to reconsider the way you and your business plan and execute.

This is the value of the VUCA Strategic Planning Methodology.

Benefits of Embracing VUCA

Every leader, and every organization, has a basic choice when it comes to VUCA.

You can either allow VUCA forces to “own” you – running the risk of overloading and overwhelming your organization. Or, you can accept and manage it – working vigilantly with your team to plan for and mitigate its effects.

Ironically, if you decide to accept VUCA, you also start to gain immunity to its impact…

When you accept VUCA as something that is not going away, you also make yourself and your people less vulnerable, and you empower everyone to deal better with uncontrollable, unpredictable forces. You are shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach. Practicing forward-looking strategy instead of backward-looking tactics.

VUCA is definitely a challenge for leaders, and presents an opportunity to develop and improve leadership and management skills. It is also an opportunity for individuals and teams to up their game and become more effective.

A Playbook for Managing in a VUCA World

How do you effectively manage teams and organizations with these VUCA forces?

  • The accelerating rate of change (volatility)
  • The lack of predictability (uncertainty)
  • The interconnectedness of cause-and-effect forces (complexity)
  • And the strong potential for misreads (ambiguity).

If we embrace and think about each of these disruptive forces we can begin to develop a playbook for managing and leading in a VUCA world. As we contemplate strategic approaches to combat each VUCA element, a strategic approach begins to emerge.

  1. We can counter volatility with vision. Creating a compelling vision, values, and purpose for your organization.
  2. We can meet uncertainty with understanding. Greater situational awareness, understanding what your competitors and the market are doing.
  3. We can react to complexity with clarity. Clearly structured teams and effective communication from leaders on the strategy and objectives.
  4. We can fight ambiguity with adaptability. An agile approach to developing a strategic plan and execution.

The next article will go deeper into this approach and explore each element in greater detail.

-Onward  

The VUCA Strategic Planning Framework

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“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – General Dwight D. Eisenhower

The last six months have proven the traditional approach to strategic planning is no longer effective.

We do not live in a static or predictable world. If a VUCA environment – with all its disruption and unpredictability – is the new normal, then organizations need to adopt a strategic planning process that is more robust and agile.

Organizations today need strategic plans designed to handle the accelerating pace of change, extreme unpredictability, and widespread VUCA disruptions across the global economy.

The VUCA Strategic Planning framework helps leaders and their teams develop comprehensive, yet flexible, plans that help determine the future of their organization.

The Need for Flexibility and Agility

To succeed in this new era, organizations need to be flexible and agile. Leaders and their teams must get out of the building and maintain the discipline of a bias to action!

As a result, organizations must also be flexible in their strategic planning and agile in their execution.

Yes, it still requires that we define why the organization exists and what we do. However, it also demands that we constantly question every assumption about the business, the market, and the environment, and make quick decisions based on what we find.

Leaders and their teams must constantly ask the question: “What if?…”

Instead of driving the bus by looking through the rear-view mirror, this agile approach to strategic planning demands that we steer by looking through the front windshield. We need to focus – gazing not just at the road ahead, but also far into the horizon, to an unknown future – so that we can better anticipate what might be coming up and react appropriately to any disruptive forces or changes that might hit us.

This flexible approach to strategy is a key ingredient to successful execution.

VUCA Strategic Planning Framework – Overview

The graphic below provides a visual overview of the VUCA Strategic Planning Framework.

There are four core phases in the process:

  • Planning Foundation – Where we define the Core Ideology (Mission, Values, Purpose) of the organization, the Envisioned Future (Vision, Long-term goals), and the Strategic Gap that separates them.
  • Strategy Development – Where we formulate the go-forward Strategy, and make a go/no-go Strategy Decision.
  • Plan Creation – Where we develop the VUCA Plan, and do Scenario Planning.
  • Management Cycle – Where we add in the Strategy Portfolio, and leverage the Management Cycle for effective execution.

The foundation to every effective VUCA Plan is robust Situational Awareness. This continuous process happens throughout the four phases of strategic plan development and execution, and represented by the parallel work stream running the length of the process.

There are also four phases to situational awareness, matching each of the strategic planning phases:

  • Perceiving – This phase is all about gaining clarity on the “as is” status of the organization through internal analysis and an external analysis of the marketplace or economy.
  • Understanding –By taking information from the first phase and interpreting it through a new or existing mental model, or strategic framework, we can be begin to make sense of the connections between the elements and stress-test possible approaches to reach “future state”.
  • Predicting – After reviewing the information and insights from the first two phases, we can leverage this knowledge to project forward and begin to predict potential future impacts or outcomes. This is an important element for Scenario Planning.
  • Reacting – During the execution phase leaders and their teams in the field must observe, interpret, and react to all the inputs they receive from the market. This is where we must react to VUCA forces and make decisions about whether to proceed, pivot, or stop!

VUCA Strategic Planning Framework – Details

In the VUCA Strategic Planning framework, Core Ideology and Envisioned Future, combined with robust Situational Awareness detailing the current state of the organization and its operating environment, create the springboard for strategy development:

  • Core Ideology – Defining the mission, values, and purpose of the organization. These elements describe why the organization exists and what it stands for today. They form the “true North” guideposts for making strategic decisions and are the foundation for any VUCA strategic plan.
  • Envisioned Future – Defining a clear vision of what the organization aspires to become or achieve and its long-term goals. These elements explain the desired “future state” and the long-term goals you and your team are working towards achieving in order to get there.
  • Situational Awareness – A thorough analysis of the environment in which the organization operates is vital. Situational awareness involves knowing where you are (“current state”) and being aware of what is happening in your environment (internal and external perspective) to understand how information, external events, and one’s own actions might affect both immediate and future outcomes.

Once this planning foundation is in place, leaders should consider strategic options that will enable the organization to bridge the “gap” between the current state and the desired future state while factoring in the operating environment as revealed by the situational analysis. Strategy is the mechanism to do this:

  • Strategy – Defining the approach that will guide individuals and teams on “how” to achieve the short-term objectives that move the organization from its starting point towards achieving its long-term goals. Strategy plays a vital role in VUCA strategic planning.
  • Strategy Decision – Once formulated, leaders must then decide if the strategy is the best one to help the organization achieve its long-term goals. If the decision is to move ahead with executing a chosen strategy then it is time to commit, and proceed with creating a complete Strategic Plan around that strategy.

The strategic planning process culminates in the creation of a VUCA Strategic Plan:

  • VUCA Strategic Plan – A clear time and resource based plan, that details the strategy and actions by which the organization intends to reach its Envisioned Future. Clarity on objectives, owners, and timelines will help ensure successful execution.

In addition to their primary VUCA Strategic Plan, leadership teams should also take several additional steps to help mitigate the potential risk of disruption or failure:

  • Scenario Planning – Identify the potential VUCA impacts that could derail your primary strategy or impede your ability to achieve the defined objectives, and action plan your response to them. Because almost no plan goes as expected, by answering “what if” across a comprehensive set of possible future scenarios your team will be better prepared to quickly react and make decisions when/if a disruption happens.
  • Strategy Portfolio– Viable alternative, complementary, or even competing strategies that your organization will resource and your team will execute in addition to the primary strategy. Your Strategy Portfolio will develop from the strategy formulation phase, additional insights gained from situational awareness, and scenario planning that went into creating your VUCA Plan. This element mitigates risk and maximizes future opportunity for the organization.

In the final stage of the VUCA strategic planning process the focus shifts from planning to execution. It is now time for leaders to delegate the responsibility for taking action and manage the outcomes.

  • Management Cycle – A circular workflow, where individuals or teams do the work of executing the strategic plan, review progress, and make course-correction decisions. The leaders of the organization manage this on a regular cadence until the objectives are either achieved, changed, or deleted.

To Your Continued Success

So, there you have it – the VUCA Strategic Planning framework – a comprehensive and integrated approach to strategic planning in times of change and disruption. It was  expressly designed to help leaders and their teams deal with a VUCA environment, effectively plan the future of their organization, and take action.

This agile and flexible approach to strategic planning, and execution, is the key to success for any organization.

I am looking forward to sharing additional tools, techniques, and best practices for each stage of the process. I would also welcome any feedback or suggestions on the framework as you work with it. If you would like to talk about how best to create a VUCA Plan for your organization, please feel free to reach out.

To your continued success.

-Onward