Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Strategic Planning and strategic thinking - what should employees know?

What are the most important things for employees to know to think more strategically? A quick survey of recent attendees at our strategic planning seminar yielded these areas for improvement:

1. Thinking about our business from the customer's perspective
2. Understanding the economics of our industry
3. Knowing the competition and their strong and weak points
4. Understanding our strategy and the reasons for it

Beyond this, I would contend that employees do need to understand some of the fundamentals of strategy - the concepts of strategic capability, focus, specialty and commodity strategies, and market share are all very useful in many jobs, not just executive ones.

Do your employees know these things? If they did, how would it help your company?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

So, could you list a few good resources for these areas on your site? I am an employee, interested in subject, but have no direct decision making authority over strategy. What info would help me understand and participate in a beneficial way?

-Gordon

Unknown said...

Here are a few articles, Gorgo...
Attracting and Retaining Employees
http://www.strategyletter.com/cp_0700/FeaturedArticle.php

Aligning Employees with Strategy
http://www.strategyletter.com/cp_1001/FeaturedArticle.php

What Does Your Company Mean?
http://www.strategyletter.com/CD0502/featured_article.html

Aligning Departments
http://www.strategyletter.com/CD1102/featured_article.html

I am also working on a training program specifically for employees who need to have better understanding of strategic thinking -I'll post much of that material here before it goes into print.