It’s time to break apart a 50-year-old business term — strategic planning — and think about it in terms of two distinct activities: strategic thinking and execution planning. Each requires two very different teams and processes.

Strategic thinking requires a handful of senior leaders meeting weekly (it’s not sufficient to do strategy work once a quarter or once a year) in what Jim Collins calls “the council.” It’s a meeting separate from the standard executive team meeting. Rather than getting mired in operational issues, the strategic thinking team is focused on discussing a few big strategic issues including those outlined in the SWT and 7 Strata tools summarized below.

In addition to seeking culture t, it is critical to hire people who can deliver on the Brand Promises and activities underpinning your strategy…

Andy Marshall and I were both interested in how the process of planning shapes strategic outcomes.

A great deal of strategy work is trying to figure out what is going on. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of comprehending the situation.

A mentor of mine once taught me that the best way to avoid finding the perfect solution to the wrong problem at work, when time allows is to hold two separate meetings: one to define the problem, and one to come up with the solution.