New Year, new plans

A client of mine asked me whether I had done my planning for the next year? I answered “Yes” and “No”. Another asked, “how to get a fresh perspective for the year that lies ahead? How to avoid that January turns out to be more of the same?”

Scenario conversations

The business and financial worlds have changed dramatically. The traditional approach to planning in no longer sufficient. We live in turbulent times. For 20 recession-free years, the business environments in most countries were relatively simple. This is no longer the case. A recession and globalisation have changed our business environments. To match new circumstances we [...]

Strategy maps – simple but seemingly complicated

All of my clients know that I enthuse about the simplicity of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Strategy Maps and the BSC itself, developed by Kaplan and Norton. Today, in a discussion with a client company’s knowledgeable director, I could again sense that the seemingly complexity of a BSC Strategy Map is so off-putting to some [...]

Good to Great and the Balanced Scorecard

How can the principles of Good to Great of Jim Collins be aligned with the Balanced Scorecard of Robert Kaplan and David Norton?

Your business constitution

Two clients drew comparisons between a constitution and a mission statement. South Africa reached an important milestone in 1994 with the creation of a new constitution. There are strong similarities between a government and a company. For one, a company which wishes to delve deep and create a new mission is really developing a new [...]

Why plan?

Most people sense there is value in planning. They intuitively know that planning will lead to a greater definition of what they wish to achieve and to actions which will grow their businesses. A frequent question is: How to move from absolutely no formal planning to some form of planning?

Thin slice it

One client asked: “How to get going? I find it difficult to make my plans part of my daily doing. How do you do it? ” We agreed that developing great ideas about the direction which is to be taken is great, invigorating and exiting. But the first new actions thereafter are less so. Your [...]