Category Archives: Strategy

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How To Build A Powerful Business Strategy

12 Steps to Business Transformation – Step 4

Over the last few posts, I introduced my Ebook 12 Steps to Business Transformation and I defined Vision, Mission and Values, which are the first 3 steps of the 12 transformational steps. This week we are going to talk about Business Strategy.

Defining the Business Strategy for your business is step 4 in my new Ebook “12 Steps to Business Transformation.”

Business Strategy considers all the internal and external market forces, your business strengths and weaknesses, your vision, mission and values, the service and/or product your business sells and the marketplace that you are selling into. The Business Strategy pulls all these divergent thoughts, ideas, conditions, and concepts together and defines a high level plan to engage successfully in the marketplace.

Without a clearly defined business strategy, your business is destined for decline and failure. This does not mean you need a 10,000-page business strategy document that takes years to write and now just collects dust on a shelf in your office.

What is needed is a simple, concise, focused and nimble plan that you constantly refer to, communicate from and measure progress against.

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Right Away and All At Once

Five Steps to Transform Your Business and Enrich Your Life

The book review for this week is Right Away and All at Once by Greg Brenneman.

Brenneman is a highly respected and experienced CEO who has led the turnarounds of many large corporations like Continental Airlines, Home Depot and Burger King (see this past post for more details). He provides some amazing business and personal insights in this book as well as revealing the foundation for his successful business philosophy.

My takeaway from this book is;

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5 Steps to Turn a Business From Failure to Success

Greg Brenneman is one of the best CEOs that you’ve never heard of! He is responsible for the turnaround of firms like Continental Airlines, Home Depot, Burger King and others. He currently is the Chairman, President and CEO of CCMP Capital, an equity investment firm that specializes in making buyout and growth equity investments.

CCMP Capital look for underperforming and undervalued businesses and invest in them in a way that they can control them and turn them around. Although Brenneman is a “low key” leader and doesn’t seek the limelight, he is one of the best business leaders in the marketplace.

He has written the book Right Now and All at Once in which he describes the leadership philosophies that he uses to acquire, lead and turnaround businesses. One of the philosophies he describes is his five step plan to turnaround and grow a business. As he emphasizes in his book, this five step process should be used in all businesses, not just businesses in trouble!

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The Third Wave

An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future

The book review for this week is The Third Wave by Steve Case

Case takes the reader through the history of the development of the Internet through his eyes and the perspective of the history of AOL. He then postulates what the next stage of internet development will look like. He calls this the Third Wave. The Third Wave can be summarized by this quote from the book:

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Business Strategy That Actually Works

The book review for this week is Strategy That Works by Paul Leinward and Cesare R. Mainardi

This is a detail oriented, fact rich, research based book that establishes a model for successfully translating business strategy to execution. They have done detailed studies on many companies like Starbucks, CEMEX and Danaher and put them into their “Identity Profile” system. This system defines the company’s value proposition, capabilities system and portfolio of products and services.