What is the vacant space in your environment or life? Are you always fighting with others to unseat them or you find your own free space and occupy it? Apply the footballer strategy (explained below) to bring peace and satisfaction to your life and career. I used to love playing football while growing up. Today, I love watching it. During my primary and secondary school days, I played as “No. 9.” And I was damn great at it. Number nine is a striker’s playing position with one primary objective: use any chance to score as many goals. I had all…
Top secret to triple your success in 2017
This is the time of the year most people make resolutions for the New Year. Resolutions fail because they are not translated into actions to become real. It is not enough to make resolutions for a new year. Have clear actions or activities to achieve them, and a yardstick to measure progress. To make a better 2017, make few (two to four) resolutions. Review each and prioritize them, in order of importance. Remember, priorities change often. Great people change their priorities “what must be accomplished today?” If your house rent is two month in arrears but also you have a…
What is your strategic context?
Many strategic plans fail at execution because they are formulated out of context. Many leaders go for a retreat for two to five days to formulate their strategic plan. They start with the following questions: What is our Vision: Where do we want to be? What is our mission: How do we get there? What values will guide our behavior and conduct? What are our strategic goals and objectives? What is the problem with the above? Most of the time, the ‘vision’ is out of context. It doesn’t resonate with today’s reality and dynamics. A company that was founded in…
What are your priorities?
Now that you know who you are, the next step is to ask what does success mean to you, and your key stakeholders. Your family, relatives, friends and community are critical. At each stage of your life, who are those people with a lot of influence (in your career choice) and interest (in your success?) What does success mean to your family? Your family- partner, children, parents, brothers and sisters and other relatives and friends to say you are successful, what will you have achieved? For your partner, is it a formal wedding? A roof over your heads both in…
Strategy perspective: your revenue sources
When a Soft Bread shop saw declining sales due to reducing walk-in customers, they went back to a strategy drawing table: why are people bypassing our shop and going straight into the supermarket to buy bread? The initial assumptions by the shop owners was that customers preferred buying bread from the Supermarket due to the convenience as a one-stop center shopping place i.e. in the supermarket, customers find everything they need in one place. It is surely convenient and faster than first branching off to a bread only shop, and then going into the supermarket to buy other items like…
A strategy that works: Perspective
What business are you really in? If you are in the education sector, what business are you really in? If you are an NGO, what business are you really in? When it comes to strategy formulation, the focus is not on input. It is on your business output. For example, if you have a college that provides secondary school training, your inputs are; Quality teaching facilities like classroom, teaching aid, playing areas, sports complexes, curriculum etc.; Quality human resource in terms of teachers and administration staff; Other amenities like great location and buildings, classrooms, dormitory among others; Unfortunately, your focus…
