Introduction

A nearly universal concern for businesses is the need for more strategic leadership.  Without this leadership, managers avoid risks, stall on decision making, or fail to deliver on high impact goals.  While many try to hire this talent or shift responsibility for strategy in a quest to resolve this gap, these adjustments more often than not does not lead to the uptick in growth that senior leaders were hoping for.  One prevalent and prevailing reason is the lack of sufficient skills, insight, and capabilities within the organization.  The purpose of this eBook is to help develop the critical thinking skills needed to help bridge these gaps and to enable organizational growth.

Man sitting on a conceptual stair with three levels (1) Business, (2) Product Strategy, (3) Program Management

Figure 1. Role of Functional Business leaders. Functional Business Leaders, such as Product Managers (example shown), are responsible for strategy implementation. They must have the know-how integrate seamlessly with senior leadership to support the corporate strategy (“what”) and with cross-functional teams to provide direction on what approach to take in order to get the desired results (“action-results”).

A pivotal role in this process are functional leaders who are responsible for commercial business growth (e.g., Product Management, Strategic Marketing, and Business Development).   These Commercial Business Leaders are the subject matter experts in the products, customer/market landscape, and company competencies and gaps. Their business insights paired with strategic thinking skills will help enable the growth through effective, actionable strategies.

 

Key Takeaway

FUNCTIONAL KNOW-HOW + BUSINESS INSIGHTS + STRATEGIC THINKING = EFFECTIVE ACTIONABLE STRATEGIES

Book Content

To help to enable the development of actionable strategies, this content focuses on the Action Oriented SWOT analysis.   My experiences with this tool have been astounding as extrapolating from known facts often leads to discovering new revelations and finding hidden opportunities.   This method builds upon the SWOT analysis, which is a tool that helps organizations to see who they are and what they are good at.  These combined methods help to enable leaders to approach growth strategies with enthusiasm, courage, and conviction.  I am excited to introduce this powerful method to more professionals.
This text covers the Action Oriented SWOT analysis in 3 lessons.  

  • In the first lesson, we'll talk about what an action oriented SWOT is, how it compares the traditional SWOT and what makes it actionable.

  • In Lesson 2, we'll talk about business insights in the form of the SWOT analysis.  We'll talk about how to avoid mistakes that are commonly made in SWOT analysis and how to prepare the SWOT analysis to be upgraded to an action oriented SWOT.

  • Finally, in Lesson 3 will upgrade the SWOT analysis into an action oriented SWOT and how to refine your SWOT analysis for maximum value.

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Title: Introduction