Dont be a life spectator.. take the plunge.

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

How much time have you invested in thinking about strategy? How many options have you considered before the plan was written? How have you ensured that the thinking behind the plan is challenged? How much time do you spend exploring trends, possibilities and cool stuff? How much time is spent playing with ideas, hopes and dreams?

The real heart of strategy is the strategist.

Brilliant strategy is the best route to desirable ends with available means.

Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. Mark Zuckerberg, while at Harvard, built a website called Facemash ‘for fun’. Even today, Facebook believe that ‘done is better than perfect’.

The smart strategist allows strategy to be shaped by events. Good reactions can make great strategy. Strategy involves competition of goals, and the risk is the difference between those goals and the ability of the organization to achieve them. So part of the risk is created by the strategy.

We need to move from comparative advantage to perpetual advantage.

All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.

Change is not overcoming inertia as much as it is redirecting, guiding, tweaking what already is and what has already happened. We must believe that we can make choices and that those choices can alter the future.

Strategy was first used in Athens (508 BC) to describe the art of leadership used by the ten generals on the war council. Some argue for the more creative, human side, while others argue for the more analytic side of strategy.

Our need for innovation has shifted power closer to the source of that power-Us. We are the future.

Corporate strategy is usually only useful if you get people engaged with helping you to make it work.

What are you doing at the moment? How does that compare to your competitors? What do you want to achieve? How can you create something people want?

Innovation is new stuff that is made useful.

Ideally, you will develop strategic response to your place in the corporate lifecycle to identify new paths of strategic renewal. You will look for new growth curves that can be started early enough to replace declining products and you will try to identify whole new curves that will take the organisation to new levels of growth as a whole.