strategic planning

As I work directly with dozens of executive leaders and speak at conferences and events around the country, I continue to hear a lot of concern about employee productivity and workplace culture and whether to remain hybrid or work flexible.

Growth is good, healthy, and essential for life. It is also essential for business.

Like most large-scale systemic events, March 2020 gave ‘official birth’ to a new era of work and life – one with new rules, new ways of thinking, and lots of big change.

“Work from home” became a necessity with COVID. Then evolved the idea of “work from anywhere” – whether that be home, a local café, or other workspace.

Managing our time and energy has – and always will – be critical to our success in almost all aspects of our lives. Leaders and managers especially need to proactively “change the game” and establish a new model for better time management.

There’s no question that strategic planning is essential for firm success. Yet despite this, the vast majority of strategic plans fail or fail to be fully or successfully implemented. Why is this the case and, more importantly, what can we do to ensure that our team and firm are on the winning side?

Being a leader is about constantly looking for problems to solve and opportunities to realize… but which ones are the right ones, which ones have the greatest return on investment, and in what order should we pursue them?

Playing to win requires a real investment in organizational redesign, and the creation of both a vision and a culture that’s worth the work.

“Grow just means more work for me and more rewards for you.” That’s an increasing lament from practitioners to principals across our industry. What went wrong and, more importantly, how can we fix this?

There is no doubt that we have been going through a season of much higher fear, anxiety, and trauma with the COVID-19 crisis and the very visual revealing of social and racial injustice and inequities.