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+ 1 917-705-6301
dave@davewakeman.com
Washington, DC 20008
Wakeman Consulting GroupWakeman Consulting GroupWakeman Consulting Group

Hello from the Hotel Covid!

Hi-

I’ve been knocked out a little bit with the Covid so last week I was missing in action…

The “mild” cases, you are still sick. You may not be in risk of going to the hospital, but everyone I know has suffered some crap from having the “mild” cases. So continue to be careful you don’t want to have to deal with this mess if unnecessary. 

Anyway, I’m going to give you a few quick hits to improve your strategy in 2022 that can be actionable for y’all. 

1. Think in terms of the five strategic decisions you need to make:

  • Your big goal
  • Your market focus
  • Your strategic advantage
  • Your systems and resources
  • Your action items

In that order.

2. Keep the concept of VUCA in mind: 

  • Volatile
  • Uncertain
  • Complex
  • Ambiguous

This will help you always be aware of trouble. 

3. Know that anyone can be lucky once, strategy is about helping you be successful over and over again: 

To me this is the difference between Apple and Facebook. Facebook built a great platform and hasn’t created anything successful since. Their success has come through acquisition. 

While Apple has the iPhone, the iPad, the AirPods, the Apple TV, and more that they’ve created. 

4. Most strategies fail because organizations do two of three things: most organizations can use a framework to identify a challenge and are too good at just running off and throwing tactics at a challenge, but most organizations fail because they never formulate a strategy that will give them an opportunity to succeed. 

5. Remember the 4 Cs of strategy:

  • Choice
  • Clarity
  • Commitment
  • Congruence

And, I’d add a 5th:

  • Competence

6. Fight the bias towards confirmation of your viewpoint: 

  • 80% of businesses look to confirm their biases instead of looking to tear down their biases to discover new opportunities. 

7. Remember 3 facts about your strategy that are true no matter what:

  • A strategy is a creative act. 
  • No strategy is set in stone. 
  • Your strategy is about creating a theory that you can test in the market. 

Let me know what y’all think of this stuff. 

I’m going to try to start posting more stuff to fire up conversations over on LinkedIn, so if we aren’t connected or you don’t follow me…hit me up there or on Twitter

See you next week,

Dave

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