Tag Archives: strategic initiative

Finance Matters, Sales Matters

What to think about when deciding to Bid/No-Bid the deal of a lifetime.

September 22, 2015 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

TO: Board of Directors

FROM: CEO

SUBJECT: Input on an opportunity to bid for a strategic project

I just got off the phone with the President of the top player in our target vertical market west of the Mississippi:

Opportunity: They are going to let an RFP in two weeks to six or fewer strategy consulting firms.

Scope: Strategy, culture, change management, marketing, and messaging. (Yes; they’ve combined it all; and Yes they want one winner to be their partner as they transform).

Budget: Over $1M in first-year contracted services.

Term: It’s a multi-year award.

Qualifications: It’s right up our alley, the CEO know us (me) but has never been a client, our lack of local presence is a good thing because they want a firm with great experience and NOT just someone local.

Process: Responses will be due six weeks after the RFP is issued, and orals will be in two months with the winner selected by year-end.

Please share thoughts on how to think this through. We want to win as always and this has big implications for our firm if we do win. We have NOT decided to bid. We will do a bid/no-bid process once we see the RFP.

Your guidance in advance is most welcome. Continue reading What to think about when deciding to Bid/No-Bid the deal of a lifetime. →

Manage to Lead

Introducing Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World as an interactive digital workbook.

April 10, 2013 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

Many intelliven.com blog posts are based on the slides and lecture notes from a masters class in Organization Development called Organization Analysis and Strategy offered at American University and taught by Peter DiGiammarino. These posts and other material from class, including:

Work problems,
Templates,
Graphics,
Slide shows, and
Assessments

are available from Amazon as a softcover workbook or from iTunes as an iBook titled Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World.

MtL_Coverv3 — Selected intelliven.com blog content is now available as a workbook from Amazon or as an iBook from iTunes.

Whether one wants to change personal habits, implement a new information system, improve a business process, get team members to work together, increase a community’s appreciation for diversity, or even to topple a monarchy, taking seven actions driven by seven disarmingly simple truths will individually and collectively help achieve the goal.

Manage to Lead presents a framework to describe and assess any organization. It also provides a structured approach to plan and implement next steps for an organization as it strives for long-term growth and performance.

Readers are invited to select a familiar organization on which to apply the tools and templates introduced throughout the workbook. Exercises in each chapter produce essential elements for the organization’s annual strategic plan and lay the groundwork for implementing that plan.

Readers can package the key elements from Organization Exercises to form a strategic plan that communicates how the organization sees itself and where it is headed. At the end of the year leaders can compare actual results with what was described in the strategic plan to study what happened, why what happened was different than plan, what is to be learned from that, and what to do differently going forward as a result.

Repeat the process over several years and compare actual to planned results year-to-year to see the organization mature, perform, and grow to its full potential.

Plan Change

How to use the Change Framework to turn initiatives into action.

March 13, 2013 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

If the leader thinks s/he knows what needs to change and that everyone is aligned, ask: “How do you know your team knows what you want to do; why don’t we ask them just to verify? If they all say what you expect them to say, a positive step towards getting what you want done will have been taken just by bringing it to the center of their attention. If it turns out that some or all of the team are not as aligned as expected, then remedial steps can be taken.”

Survey the leader’s top team and ask them each:

To describe the current state, that is: how things are today.

What really good things happen if we change and what really bad things happen if we do not?

To describe how things would be in the future if their ideal changes were successfully implemented.

What needs to be done in order to get from where things are today to where things would ideally be next?

What will make it hard to do what needs to be done in order to get from today to the targeted next state?

Review results with the leader to bring him/her up to speed on the group’s data. Look for and discuss fully any points the leader finds confusing or surprising. Continue reading How to use the Change Framework to turn initiatives into action. →

Sales Matters

How to form and ask good questions of customers and prospects to create and expand the opportunity to deliver great value.

February 14, 2013 Peter DiGiammarino

Good questions of customers and prospects can dramatically increase the odds of developing opportunities to deliver value. Questions that engage and that allow the customer or prospect to reveal and expand their realities and the opportunities to provide value are ideal.

It takes conscious effort to plan for, create, and to make the most of opportunities to engage. The best practice is to think ahead, develop a collection of stock questions, and pay attention to find, cultivate, and take advantage of opportunities to engage.

Below are characteristics of well-phrased questions followed by some examples.

A well-phrased question:

Is not answerable in a single word, i.e. it is open-ended and inspires an engaging dialogue on a broad agenda.
Builds credibility and demonstrates Continue reading How to form and ask good questions of customers and prospects to create and expand the opportunity to deliver great value. →

Finance Matters, Get Clear, Manage to Lead, People Matters

Know the definition of strategy to help everyone stay on the same page.

May 6, 2012 Peter DiGiammarino

The following are definitions of phrases that use the word strategy. They provide a useful way to think about the term and matters directly related to it:

Strategy is what people in an organization plan to do in order to “win” whatever game they are playing.

Strategic thinking is how decisions and actions are made in the immediate-term in a manner that is mindful of long-term implications and consistent with a strategy.

Strategic planning is the structured process that management uses to periodically engage leaders in advancing their strategy.

Strategic plan is a description of an organization as it presently exists and where it is to be in the future along with how it will go from where it is today to where it will be next on the way to achieve a long-term vision.

Strategic initiatives are projects identified as part of strategic planning and documented in the strategic plan that are to address what is most important to change next in order to increase the odds of winning.

Strategic management is what is done to deliberately operate and develop the organization in a manner that is entirely consistent with its strategy.

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