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Ironclad Strategy > Strategy Training Blog

Determining Appropriate Strategic Objectives

On 02/04/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
Determining appropriate strategic objectives is absolutely vital to the development of a winning strategy. Without good, achievable, and above all clear objectives, you can almost guarantee the failure of your strategic plan for the simple reason that your strategies will not be aligned behind a common goal. Following on from our previous post - Setting the [...]
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Setting your Organisation’s Strategic Direction

On 22/03/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
Setting your organisation’s strategic direction is absolutely vital to overall strategic success. Get this wrong, and you run the very real risk of your resources being deployed where they have little chance of success. Ultimately, it is the role of the Board to set strategic direction. With careful consideration of the benefit required by the [...]
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Simple to Supercharged SWOT Analysis Free Webinar

On 15/03/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Free Webinar
Leading strategic management training company Ironclad Strategy has announced the launch of its latest free webinar entitled Simple to Supercharged SWOT Analysis. This free webinar, scheduled to run during March and April 2013, shows participants how to correctly conduct a simple SWOT analysis, and then how to supercharge the SWOT analysis by using some of the [...]
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The Tools of Strategic Analysis – Analysing Organisational Capabilities

On 08/03/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
In an earlier post we considered the importance of a company’s resources to its strategy, but it’s worth noting that resources are not productive on their own. A surgeon, for example, cannot perform to the best of their ability without an anesthetist, nurses, instruments and expensive equipment. For resources to perform a task, they must work together [...]
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The Tools of Strategic Analysis – Analysing Resources

On 22/02/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
Recently we have written about the external aspects of strategic analysis through the use of SWOT, PESTEL and Porter’s Five Forces analysis. Now, we will turn our attention inwards to look at the importance of analysing resources to its strategy. Strategy, in its simplest form, involves the use of an organisation’s resources and capabilities to [...]
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Effective Strategic Management – A Strategy Infographic

On 13/02/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Effective Strategic Management Infographic
At Ironclad Strategy we teach companies to gain and retain competitive advantage. The following strategy infographic is a high-level representation of what are important steps in the process. Effective Strategy | Create infographics  
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How Leaders Mistake Execution for Strategy

On 13/02/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Booz and Co Website Image. Leaders mistake execution for strategy
In an earlier blog post on Setting Strategic Objectives, I argued that organisations often get hung up on creating their Mission, Vision and Values, and generally mistake these for strategy. This argument has now been supported by the team at Booz and Company in their recently published “How Leaders Mistake Execution for Strategy (and Why That [...]
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The Tools of Strategic Analysis – Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis

On 13/02/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
In recent posts we have looked at the limitations of SWOT Analysis, and considered how this can be ‘supercharged’ through the use of PESTEL analysis. In this article we look at another way of enhancing your strategic analysis through the use of Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis. Porter’s Five Forces is an analysis framework used to [...]
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The Tools of Strategic Analysis – PESTEL Analysis

On 04/02/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
In an earlier post we looked at the benefits, challenges and common pitfalls of a SWOT analysis – the most commonly-used tool of strategy analysis. In this post we would like to explore how an organisation can ‘supercharge’ its SWOT analysis by using a PESTEL analysis. PESTEL analysis, often PEST or STEEP analysis (and sometimes [...]
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The Tools of Strategic Analysis – SWOT Analysis

On 28/01/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
S’wot with SWOT Analysis? SWOT analysis is the most commonly used tool of strategic analysis, but unfortunately also one of the most misunderstood and misapplied. In this article we will look at the use and value of SWOT analysis, consider some of the ways it is often misused by organisations, and suggest some best practice [...]
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The Importance of Identifying the Right Strategic Beneficiaries

On 21/01/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
Who are the Right Strategic Beneficiaries? In order to develop an appropriate strategic plan, it is important to identify the strategic beneficiaries of the organisation and the benefit they desire. Without this identification the strategic plan is guaranteed to fail for the simple reason that it does not focus on the outcome required by those [...]
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Developing a Strategy Road Map

On 10/01/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
Developing a Strategy Road Map One of the most famous and widely-used quotes attributed to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is “He who fails to plan is planning to fail” - a quotation that has been adopted enthusiastically by the project management community in more recent times. It is perhaps a lesser known fact however (among [...]
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Identifying Fixed Constraints in your Strategic Capability

On 02/01/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
Once good strategy governance has been established (as explained previously in Implementing Good Strategy Governance), there are 4 decisions that should be made, and approved by the Board, before the organisation can begin to plan its strategy. These 4 decisions help to provide structure to the approach by identifying and confirming relevant fixed constraints in [...]
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Signs of a Bad Strategy

On 01/01/2013 By James Leighton Davis
Bad Strategy
In a recent blog post, Sharad Gupta offered his perspective on four signs that may indicate a bad strategy, namely: Failure to define the key challenge Goals are considered strategy Bad strategic objectives Lots of complex words While these four are certainly valid, and can be seen time and time again in the strategic plans [...]
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Famous Strategy Quotes

On 05/12/2012 By James Leighton Davis
Sun Tzu
From the battlefield to the boardroom, here are our favourite famous strategy quotes. “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” ― Sun Tzu “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. ” ― Michael E. Porter “However beautiful the [...]
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Holding Strategic Management Consultants to Account

On 19/11/2012 By James Leighton Davis
A common refrain among senior management is that if you ask strategic management consultants the time, they will ask you for your watch – sadly, this is all-to-often true. While undoubtedly there are consultants in the market who add significant value to their client’s businesses, many have developed a product that simply finds what you [...]
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Lack of Management Training Harming Managers

On 15/11/2012 By James Leighton Davis
Promoting employees to a managerial level without the correct training beforehand is having a severe negative impact on UK businesses – according to Ann Francke, the CEO of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). Research from the institute, cited by hrmagazine.co.uk, suggests appropriate management leadership development increased organisational performance by 23 per cent and people performance [...]
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Implementing Good Strategy Governance

On 31/10/2012 By James Leighton Davis
Ironclad Strategy Masterclass Series
Is Good Strategy Governance Important? When improving an organisation’s strategic capability it is important, right from the outset, to make sure that appropriate structures are in place for strategy governance. At Ironclad Strategy Training we recommend that the following questions should be considered and the answers confirmed as they will ensure an appropriate and value-adding strategy [...]
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Setting strategic objectives

On 25/07/2012 By James Leighton Davis
The exercise of setting effective strategic objectives can be boiled down into one simple sentence – making the intangible tangible. When setting an appropriate strategic objective, it is critically important to make sure that it provides a baseline against which your strategic performance can be measured and monitored. If it doesn’t, how will you know [...]
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The GFC – A failure of governance, or poor strategic management?

On 22/06/2012 By James Leighton Davis
Our colleague, and fellow Strategic Planning Society (SPS)… erm… Fellow, Kim Warren from Strategy Dynamics has recently published a new book for Kindle, entitled ‘The Trouble with Strategy’, which offers an interesting perspective on the causes of the 2008-9 economic turmoil and resultant crises. I’m sure Kim won’t object to me reproducing a short paragraph from this [...]
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    • Determining Appropriate Strategic Objectives
    • Setting your Organisation’s Strategic Direction
    • Simple to Supercharged SWOT Analysis Free Webinar
    • The Tools of Strategic Analysis – Analysing Organisational Capabilities
    • The Tools of Strategic Analysis – Analysing Resources
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