Making Critical Strategic Choices

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If you’ve been following the conversation here for any length of time, you know that I am always intrigued by great questions.  Working my way through Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works right now and discovered a great question/concept over the weekend.  I knew I had to share this with you.  See also, Supercharge Your Ministry Impact with These 5 Questions.

Here’s the setup: When you’re trying to effectively communicate strategy at all levels within your organization, the challenge “is to find simple, clear, and compelling ways to do so.”  Obvious, right?  Not rocket science.  But doing it well…that is the trick.

Here’s the concept: “Ask, ‘What are the critical strategic choices that everyone in the organization should know and understand?” (Pg. 142)

The illustration from Playing to Win: “At P&G (Proctor and Gamble), it boiled down to three themes that would enable the company to win, in the places and ways it had chosen, regardless of the details of individual differences between businesses (here are there critical strategic choices):

  1. Make the consumer the boss, 
  2. Win the consumer value equation,
  3. Win the two mot important moments of truth (i.e., when the customer encounters the product in the store for the first time and when he or she first uses it at home).

Need a ministry example?  How about Craig Groeschel’s statement that “We will do anything short of sin to introduce people to God.”  Or how about “If you want to reach people no one else is reaching, you need to do things no one else is doing.”

Can you see the application for your organization?  What if your team spent some time figuring out the critical strategic choices and then a way to say it that’s simple, clear and compelling?

What do you think?  How would you articulate your themes?  Have a question?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

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