Excerpt

Introduction

We all have turning points in our lives, after which nothing

is ever the same. When I was in my twenties, I stumbled

across the subject of goals. Within thirty days my life had

changed forever.

Over the years, I studied goals and learned how important

they were for both business and personal success. One of the

discoveries that astonished me was finding that less than 3

percent of people at all levels of business and industry have

clear, specific, written, time-bounded goals for their lives

that they are working toward on a daily basis.

As I began to implement goal setting in my own life and

experience the remarkable changes that working toward

clearly defined goals can bring about, I became interested in

the subject of strategy, especially business strategy, which is

really business goal setting. For many years, I have studied

the leading military generals of history and how they used

strategic thinking to achieve extraordinary victories, sometimes

against overwhelming odds.

Over the last three decades, I have worked with more

than 1,000 of the world’s largest corporations, and over

10,000 small and medium-size businesses. I became

fascinated by the subject of strategic planning and the impact

it can have on an organization of any size.

What I discovered was that most companies have no

strategic plan at all. What they have is a budget. They have

sales projections. They have operational plans. They have

hopes, dreams, and aspirations, but in terms of crystallizing

the future of the organization and deciding how they are

going to get from where they are to where they want to go,

very few companies have a genuine strategic plan.

Business Model Innovation

We are living in an age of the most dramatic change in all of history.

What worked very well for some companies for a long time

does not work at all today. Companies like Blockbuster and

Borders Books went from market leaders to bankruptcy in just

a couple of years when the business environment changed.

Today, business model innovation is one of the hottest

subjects determining business success or failure. According

to the experts, fully 80 percent of companies today are

attempting to survive and thrive with obsolete business models.

Just look at what is happening to newspapers, magazines,

and traditional media of all kinds. They are in serious trouble.

Your Most Important Work

What is the most important work that you do? The answer is

“thinking.” Your ability to think clearly about who you are,

what you want, and how to create a wonderful future for

your business is more important than anything else you can

do. In the pages ahead, I will share with you some of the

most powerful, helpful, and important ideas that have ever

been developed in the subject of strategic planning. You will

learn how to think better, with greater clarity, and make better

decisions about the future of your business than perhaps

you ever have before.

With each idea or insight, you will think of your own ideas

about actions that you can take immediately to get better

results. You will see things that you can change or improve in

your business, starting immediately. Whether you are a one-

person company or an international giant, when you and the

people around you practice the principles of Business

Strategy, you will find that you can accomplish more in a few

years than organizations without this capacity are able to

accomplish in five or ten years, if ever.

By thinking and acting strategically, you will increase

your profitability and the level of satisfaction that you get

from your company and your career. You will increase your

overall levels of quality and market penetration. More than

anything else, you’ll have a tremendous feeling of being in

control of your personal and business destiny. You will be

able to look back every year or two and say, “This is exactly

where we wanted to be.”