Monday, November 11, 2024

How Do We Think Strategically?

Within today’s rapidly changing corporations, individuals at all levels are increasingly called upon to demonstrate their ability to think strategically. However, many are inadequately prepared to perform this task. Many new executives, and even those long within the executive ranks, are unsure how to properly engage in strategic thinking.

New Thinking About the Value of Strategy

During the 1960s and the 1970s, “strategic planning” emerged as the model for corporate planning. However, by the 1980s, the value of strategic planning began to be called into question.

Brand Relevance

In a world of too many brands for human cognition to make sense of, a successful brand needs to stand for something that actually matters. What makes brands enduringly relevant today is the way their enterprise impacts the society, its culture, the environment, the world, and values which aren’t consumer-driven considerations.

Non-Financial Performance Measurements

We are all well-acquainted with the traditional measures of enterprise performance. But today, under the influence of globalization, environmental crises, and widespread ethical breakdown there is pressure to identify and report new, non-traditional, and “non-financial” measures of performance to get at newly recognized dimensions of enterprise value, success, and significance. These new demands emerge from a belief that social, environmental, ethical, and geopolitical factors materially impact the ability of a company or enterprise to perform favorably.

Why Do We Need a Brand Strategy?

With the dawn, during the mid 1990s, of the Age of Intellectual Capital, came the realization that the real wealth in the modern enterprise is located in the intangible assets of that enterprise and not in the “traditional (tangible) assets” such as real estate, plant, equipment, inventory, cash, and the like.