In the real estate business, agents refer to a home that has been renovated recently as “turnkey.” A buyer can turn the key on the front door and start enjoying the home immediately. Equally, a turnkey house is one that can be rented out without much fuss, making it a valuable asset to the real…

It might be an understatement to say that the global pandemic of COVID-19 has been a learning experience for all businesses large and small. Every type of business regardless of location has had to adapt to a changing environment, purchasing behaviors, supply chain problems, employee layoffs, and alternative approaches to operations. Businesses that survived the…

Conventional wisdom has it that first, you build the strategic plan including the Vision, the Mission, and the Focus Areas of the company, and then comes the operational plan. The latter connects the front-line projects with the long-term vision of the business. These are the two distinct steps to create a practical map of the company’s destination. However, this…

Your strategy is a living document. A work of continuous progress. Leave it alone for too long and it will rot. Nurture it and you’ll be rewarded. How? By applying this simple process improvement methodology to your strategic processes. Here is the truth. The old way of doing strategy with static tools and poor habits…

How well does your company run when you don’t show up for work? The answer to this question has a significant impact on the value of your business. Suppose your company could survive your absence for a while. In that case, you will score well on something we refer to as “Hub & Spoke,” one…

Traditionally businesses have operated on a need-to-know basis. People had access only to information that was deemed essential by their managers. Other “more sensitive” information was protected and hidden. Organizational transparency is the practice of sharing information regarding the organization’s operations with its people with the intent to create clarity, trust, and accountability. Lack of…

What’s your number? You know the one. It’s the amount of money you would have to be offered to sell your business. It can be tempting to imagine selling for an outlandish sum, but is that amount necessary for you to consider your exit a win? John Warrillow recently interviewed Cheryl Contee, the co-founder of Attentive.ly,…

Owning or managing a small business or SME is filled with challenges. The global pandemic made this abundantly clear. There are constant daily issues dealing with employees, customers, vendors, and cash flow. Generally, these normal occurrences are short-term in duration and can (or could) be handled fairly quickly with some degree of efficiency. On the…

All organizations recognize the importance of communicating their strategy to their people. However, few do a very good job on it. That’s evident in companies’ inability to execute their strategy. The common approach to strategy communication includes a day or two of live events with strategy presentations and discussions on the new strategy. After that,…

Every business or organization of any size has a “culture.” In the business world, many refer to this as business culture, corporate culture, or organizational culture. What Is a Culture? Business culture cannot be pinpointed or defined in detail. It is, however, culture or atmosphere that prevails about how employees behave and generally their beliefs….

If your goal is to build a more valuable company, stop selling your time. Billing by the hour or day means customers are renting your time rather than buying a result, which means that your business model lacks leverage. To grow, you need to either work harder or hire more people. Since it can take…

One of the best parts of the 2021 Cascade Strategy Fest was hearing speakers and participants share mental models that they used to cultivate strong strategic thinking. Often these models encoded some timeless business wisdom but did so in a way that was easy to remember and act. And once one of these clicks, it…