The very best way to manage a business that has been floundering is to, first, decide on a reasonable course of action, not necessarily the perfect one but good enough and, second, put 100% effort of the entire organization into achieving progress on that direction. Many companies flounder because they waste energies “perfecting” their strategy; the accompanying indecisiveness renders the organization rudderless. Topics: Find True Northwest; Forget Brilliance; Define Critical Problems; Face Changing Technologies; Deviations Strengthen the Course; The CEO’s Guide to Decisive Action Trumps Perfection. To be published 2Q07.
John,
Thanks for the questions. The detail and some actual cases for this topic of Decisive Action will be published in 2Q07. I'd rather wait until then to provide more robust comment. However, for now a quickie on your two questions. Concerning whether a direction was "good enough", I totally relied on a combination of common sense and inputs from involved people, employees, experienced directors, customers. And to get the organization to put in 100% effort resulted primarily from extensive, blunt, honest communications (For both, see Aggregate Wisdom when it is published). Maybe you can check back when Aggregate Wisdom and Decisive Action are published. To be included in Decisive Action are sub-topics: Find True Northwest, Forget Brilliance, Define Critical Problems, Face Changing Technologies, and Deviations Strengthen the Course.
Posted by: thomas epley | February 10, 2007 at 05:44 PM
Tom,
Sounds like a sensible strategy. Can you talk to a case where it worked? How did you know it was good enough? What things caused the organization to put in 100% effort?
-John
Posted by: John Kilcline | February 09, 2007 at 09:46 PM