The cornerstone of any decision making process is to know the environment in which you work. However, “knowing” your environment simply is not enough – in terms of strategic management, anyways. What we need is a way to list these factors, rate them relative to one-another, and determine how we stack-up when it comes to… Continue reading →

A SWOT analysis is a great tool to understand your operating environment. However, misusing this tool can – at best – prove to be useless. This post is a quick introduction to the SWOT, how to use it, and how to get the most out of it! If you’re reading this post, you’re probably familiar… Continue reading →

The first step to any strategic management (or planning) process is defining the Mission and Vision of your organization. So…what does that mean? Very simple: A mission is what you do, your purpose, the reason you exist. A Vision describes what you want to become, how you want to get there, who you want to… Continue reading →

I think I’ve jumped-the-gun a bit with my posts. I realized that I began discussing advanced applications and tools in the Strategic Management process but never actually defined what strategic management is! Strategic Planning is PART OF Strategic Management Every company has – at one time or another – gone through what some would call… Continue reading →

How do we make decisions? Depending on the size of the company or program, that answer tends to be very involved. Turning the question on me, I would reply with a number of different metrics: Cost, Political issues, technical worthiness, and so on… The problem is that none of these options are equally weighted. What… Continue reading →