Temp. Overview. Case Studies. Unilytics.com/images/KPI%2520Paradigm%2520Hourglass.png. Snowboarding & Strategy. During the 2006 Winter Olympics, a new event was introduced – the amazing Snowboard Cross – which brought the language, style, and unpredictability of the extreme sports culture as a colourful comparison with the traditional ice white world. The course is full of jumps, bumps, and huge turns that allow competitors to overtake each other as they fight for first place without pushing or bumping into each other. The snowboarders compete on their own for the first two runs against the clock with the top 32 going through at which point they race in groups of four, with the top two in each heat surviving until just four are left to contest the final. It’s a stark contrast to the tactics and approach required for success in many other winter sports including downhill skiing as explained by Graham Bell, a veteran of five Winter Olympics: "It is so frenetic and you have to think on your feet, you have to look behind you and assess what is going on, decide when is the best time to attempt to pass.
Strategy For The Real World... Organizations are (sometimes) incapable of carrying out the strategies they have developed. Strategy is (too often) viewed as something that only senior managers and huge consultancies do behind closed doors. Strategy planning (often) takes place in a fantasy world, yet strategic action takes place in the real world.
If strategy is reduced to being a document then you have made your strategy impotent. Writing a fictional view of a world to please you, or your boss, or your shareholders is acceptable but not if you don’t know how to make that fiction real. Strategy matters. Calling something “strategic” does not make it smarter. Give me time to thinkThe Toyota recall crisis came about after a horrific collision in California. In September 2009, Toyota issued a recall of 3.8 million vehicles but blamed a removable floor mat that caused the accelerator to stick instead of making it clear that mechanical systems were the real cause. The real world is global, not local. Reacting matters as much as planning. Young Ingvar Kamprad used unexpected cash from his father – a gift for good exam results - to found IKEA.
He lived near furniture makers so reacted by selling furniture. He reacted to a boycott from local rivals by producing his own furniture. Kamprad's first designer reacted to not being able to fit a table in a car by creating the first flat pack. Then Kamprad reacted to his showroom burning down by building a huge replacement. He reacted to excessive customer demand by starting self-service. So the IKEA strategy came from clever reactions to great unplanned opportunities. Unplanned opportunities may be your best chance of creating a great strategy so you need to be constantly looking for them. Does this problem let us start again and do it better? Any fool can produce a plan. The planner is continually sifting through events for evidence about how well the plan is working. Most corporations have an annual planning cycle. Some people follow the plan.
Other people ignore the plan. Achieving Successful Strategic Transformation.