BrainZooming
JANUARY 11, 2017
I jotted down the questions since I saw them as a strong strategic thinking exercise. A Strategic Thinking Exercise for Determining Trustworthiness. Applying this Strategic Thinking Exercise Broadly. This is a great example of a simple strategic thinking exercise to speed and sharpen decision making. What’s even better about these four strategic thinking questions? Branding and Marketing.
BrainZooming
JULY 24, 2017
That’s when having the strategic thinking skills to extract the great ideas from everything else is so vital to them seeing the light of day and getting the consideration they deserve. 9 Strategic Thinking Skills to Create Clarity for Great Ideas. Thinking about some of the strategic thinking skills involved in that task, here is a handy checklist you can use with yourself and others to see how adept you (or they) are at surfacing great ideas.
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BrainZooming
FEBRUARY 9, 2017
That’s why instead of typing out nine strategic thinking questions from various business conversations (and contemplations) so far this week, I decided to Sharpie marker and share them with you in this image. These are strategic thinking questions our clients are asking. Download our FREE eBook: The 600 Most Powerful Strategic Planning Questions. Branding and Marketing. I needed a new way to express myself last night.
BrainZooming
MARCH 9, 2017
What could you do to your boring office so you and others are thinking strategically more readily and effectively? Someone searched and came to the Brainzooming.com website looking for strategic thinking in the office examples. While we have a post on doing thinking strategically without leaving the office , we don’t have anything on how the physical surroundings of an office can boost strategic thinking. Strategic Inputs.
BrainZooming
DECEMBER 1, 2017
Matt Britton, a millennial generation expert , spoke about the anticipating the Class of 2025 as the keynote speaker on the closing day of the October 2017 Social Media Strategies Summit in New York. His keynote got us thinking about how today’s ten-year-olds (the Class of 2025) will change the landscape for brands, following in the wake of the impact millennials have created. A Future-Looking Strategic Thinking Experiment. Old Hat, Old Thinking, or Both?
BrainZooming
AUGUST 28, 2017
How can you develop strategic thinking exercises to envision the future when it’s so easy to let previous experience cloud your imagination? In an a mid-August 2017 article in The Wall Street Journal , Pasquale Romano, CEO of ChargePoint, Inc., Romano shared an important insight into the challenge of developing strategic thinking exercises to envision future strategy: “Until you drive an EV, you are colored by 135 years of going to the gas station.
BrainZooming
MAY 8, 2017
Or you receive confirmation from a speaker that what you have been thinking is right (or pretty close to right), and you can take that back to the office and tell the boss. A Strategic Thinking Framework Is Better than an Answer, Really! Instead, I include lots of strategic thinking frameworks for decision making. While these strategic thinking frameworks aren’t answers, they allow you to quickly develop answers even in areas where you lack experience.
BrainZooming
MARCH 30, 2017
The folks at Armada Corporate Intelligence profiled a Bloomberg Businessweek story on Fanatics , the sports apparel manufacturer and marketer, in its Inside the Executive Suite. It also uses its agile strategy to market apparel for niche opportunities where it might sell as few as ten t-shirts. We thought the list was intriguing, so we secured the go ahead to share the strategic thinking questions with you here.
BrainZooming
APRIL 12, 2017
My dad was a huge believer in The Power of Positive Thinking. I think that book, by Norman Vincent Peale (affiliate link) was the first self-help book he tried to get me to read. For some reason, I particularly resisted The Power of Positive Thinking , although I’m hard pressed to say why. For whatever reason, though, I do not think I ever read the book in its entirety. The Power of Positive Thinking Plus Strategic Thinking Questions.
BrainZooming
JANUARY 16, 2018
Before an impending purge of The Wall Street Journal back issues in my office, I reviewed an article from a late December 2017 issue: The New Age of Bespoke Travel. The article inspired a laundry list of strategic thinking exercise prompts to re-imagine a threatened business model when your service offering is under assault from online offerings, bots, or some other form of complete automation. A New Strategic Thinking Exercise. Branding and Marketing.
BrainZooming
JULY 3, 2017
A common fear about selecting a single target market or audience persona is that focusing on one market when making branding strategy decisions is risky. The fear is target marketing will cause a brand to miss stellar growth opportunities coming from other markets or audiences. I can understand why a brand owner may think that. Why Target Marketing Won’t Cripple Your Branding Strategy.
BrainZooming
APRIL 7, 2017
Articulating Your Strategic Innovation Direction in an Understandable Way. Strategic Thinking Questions to Identify What Matters for a Brand. Workplace Diversity – The Why, Who, and How of Strategic Thinking. Strategic Thinking Success – 3 Critical Thinking Perspectives. Strategic Thinking Perspectives – Three Strategic Voices to Include on Your Team. Creative Thinking – The Math of Brainstorming and New Ideas. #3
BrainZooming
MARCH 7, 2017
That was the question from two nonprofit executives tasked with planning market research to support a new marketing plan. Before diving into planning market research, I asked about old research they had. With that preliminary check on the previous research methods, we spent our time discussing what they could discover from what they had in hand before planning market research. 14 Questions Before Planning Market Research.
BrainZooming
MARCH 2, 2017
What types of strategic planning activities are in a strategic thinking workshop ? As we collaborate with a client to design strategic planning activities for a strategic thinking workshop , we explore various possibilities. The goal is making sure the strategic planning activities we select best match the organization, the objective, and the participants. 6 Potential Strategic Planning Activities for a Workshop. Branding and Marketing.
BrainZooming
FEBRUARY 24, 2017
We have released a host of eBooks on strategic planning exercises and ideas to increase collaboration, creative thinking, alignment, and successful implementation. In case you missed any Brainzooming strategy planning eBooks, here are seven to jump start your strategic planning exercises and better engage your team in shaping your organization’s direction. Results – Creating Strategic Impact (Download). 11 Fun Ideas for Strategic Planning (Download).
BrainZooming
JUNE 22, 2017
How can you get the most mileage from the free strategic planning eBooks we regularly offer as downloads? We do not pretend to be able to imagine EVERY single situation where you might apply our strategic thinking exercises. Yet when we create new eBooks, our main goal is ensuring the content is heavy on ideas and tools you can apply to improve strategic thinking and implementation in your organization. Using Our Own Strategic Planning Exercises.
BrainZooming
JUNE 21, 2017
Download: FREE Innovation Strategic Thinking Fake Book. Are you making the best use of customer input and market insights to deliver innovation and growth? This new ebook features sixteen strategic thinking exercises to help you ideate, prioritize, and develop your best innovative growth ideas. Learn and rapidly deploy effective strategic thinking exercises to spur innovation.
BrainZooming
MARCH 3, 2017
Yesterday, we identified the six types of strategic planning process activities we use to design a client’s strategic thinking workshop. To facilitate you going deeper into thinking about how these activities function within a strategic planning process workshop, here are articles in each of the six areas. 6 Types of Strategic Planning Process Activities. Fun Strategic Planning Activities – Do you like answering ice breaker questions?
BrainZooming
DECEMBER 4, 2017
While everyone hopes these meetings are smart, strategic, and have a meaningful impact on the business , that rarely seems to be the case. 12 Reasons Budget Meetings Aren’t Strategic. Too often, budget meetings aren’t strategic. They are handled out of context strategically , looking at the business by department instead of by initiative. Budget meetings are not integrated with strategic planning and business strategy. It’s that time.
BrainZooming
NOVEMBER 17, 2017
Emma Alvarez Gibson and I were talking about identifying strategic themes within tens or hundreds of ideas from a strategic planning workshop or from thousands of comments within a survey. Other than a big dose of help from outside forces , what are dependable ways to identify meaningful strategic themes? As we chatted, I perused the Brainzooming website looking for articles on how we surface strategic themes. 10 Cues to Identify Strategic Themes among Ideas.
BrainZooming
MAY 12, 2017
I think this is supposed to (and can) be a good thing, but I have to tell you something. I say all this because I think a lot of people romanticize self-employment or entrepreneurship. Don’t worry if those people aren’t marketing themselves as leaders or guides. ” It’s a horrible assumption, if you think about it. Brainzooming - All Posts Career Collaboration Guest author Performance Strategic Thinking mentoring
BrainZooming
FEBRUARY 1, 2017
While we have done a bunch of strategic and creative thinking skills workshops for sales teams in the past several years , we have never put together a specific diagnostic on this topic. 10 Questions to Identify Innovative Thinking in Salespeople. Working from an Innovative Thinking Platform. If a salesperson employs a comparable approach to think about value, it is a great sign he or she is creating innovative solutions.
BrainZooming
DECEMBER 12, 2017
Each of the four roles were intended to help push the group’s thinking on its customer experience strategy in varied ways. 4 Roles to Push Bold Customer Experience Strategy Thinking. We provided strategic thinking questions of their own to use, including: “That’s great and how can we do that _?” Questioners of What We Think (to challenge the status quo ). That’s the problem of me never having taken one of Chuck’s Six Thinking Hats workshops.
BrainZooming
JULY 5, 2017
The size and scale of opportunities you pursue, even in a company that was not always all that innovative, oriented me to think a big team and significant dollars are vital for real innovation. We haven’t wavered from the initial reason for starting The Brainzooming Group: to take our learnings on simplifying, collaboratively approaching, and speeding up strategic planning to smart organizations wanting to conduct business differently.
BrainZooming
AUGUST 7, 2017
It made me think of the phrase “too big to fail.” You may think your brand is strong and ready to withstand anything that might come its way. But all the while, competitors or market forces you may not even suspect are disrupting your place in the market. 9 Strategic Thinking Questions for Breaking a Business. Agile Strategy – 16 Strategic Thinking Questions to Explore Disruptive Innovation. 12 Permissions to Disrupt New Markets.
BrainZooming
JANUARY 4, 2017
I think I’ll go eat worms.” The “Power of Positive Thinking” works. Taking money from someone gives them the right to tell you what they think you should do. For organizational innovation success, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative growth strategies.
BrainZooming
APRIL 21, 2017
The folks at Armada Corporate Intelligence offered an internal branding strategy take on the United Airlines woes, offering strategic thinking questions you can ask and answer to improve your brand’s resiliency and avoid brand crises. One wonders whether United strategized the possibilities with the officers before they boarded the plane to remove the passenger. In short they need strategic thinkers who can develop strategy and turn it into results.
BrainZooming
MARCH 28, 2017
In place of only recycling ideas, try these nine strategic thinking questions and creative thinking paths. The formula is to ask a specific question, LISTEN for responses from others, and follow a related creating thinking direction to generate ideas more quickly: Ask: What’s been tried before? What competitors’ strategies are in the market? Download our FREE eBook: The 600 Most Powerful Strategic Planning Questions. Branding and Marketing.
BrainZooming
MAY 11, 2017
They counter suggesting strategic thinking questions as a starting point over-promises and ignores all the other dynamics involved. For these types of established players, you have to disrupt their status quo thinking so they realize that brands not even in their consideration sets are aiming to render them pointless in the marketplace. 13 Exercises for Disruptive Innovation Strategy: Disrupting Thinking eBook. Marketing strategies. Industry and market dynamics.
BrainZooming
SEPTEMBER 11, 2017
Instead, executives talk about customers or growth or cost cutting or new markets or a whole variety of other areas that can contribute to business success. That realization was a breakthrough in how we would create a strategy development exercise back when I ran strategic planning for a Fortune 500 corporation. The consultants we worked with to help us develop our first big strategic marketing plan back in 1997, didn’t provide productive structure to help us.
BrainZooming
AUGUST 29, 2017
Are you prepared to take better advantage of your brand’s customer and market insights to generate innovative product ideas? The right combination of outside perspectives and productive strategic thinking exercises enables your brand to ideate, prioritize, and propel innovative growth. Rapidly deploy effective strategic thinking exercises to spur innovation. Incorporate market-based perspectives into your innovation strategy in successful ways.
BrainZooming
NOVEMBER 2, 2017
I’m in Las Vegas this week, speaking at the Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas. Strategic Thinking Exercises – 5 Questions to Test Your Vision Statement Impact . Establishing a Clear Market Position. Strategic Thinking Exercises – Where Does Your Brand Live? . A Strategic Creative Brief – 4 Benefits for Your Communications Efforts .
BrainZooming
MARCH 10, 2017
These companies are trying to motivate researchers facing daunting odds for bringing a drug successfully to market. Something to Think about for Your Business: How does your organization create opportunities for all employees to invest in innovation, even if you are not looking for them to generate or develop new product ideas? Something to Think about for Your Business: Do your innovation metrics track performance from idea generation to R&D, and through business results?
BrainZooming
FEBRUARY 13, 2017
Decompose the vision into strategic dimensions. Strategic dimensions are areas where an organization has the opportunity to make major decisions or where industry players are creating competitive advantage. Market areas served. After identifying a handful of strategic dimensions, create a list of possible options the organization could choose on each one. Brainzooming - All Posts Implementation Performance Strategic Planning Strategic Thinking Strategy Tools
BrainZooming
NOVEMBER 28, 2017
He’s about to leave his job as a strategic planning and marketing VP at a Fortune 500 transportation company and he’s got this whole other direction mapped out for himself—he’s been blogging now for a couple of years in preparation for this move. “I I don’t think I had any clue, at the start, about the impact the blog would have on my life.”. Back in LA I keep thinking about how naturally we worked together and how our skills and expertise complemented one another.
BrainZooming
FEBRUARY 28, 2017
Related posts Diet Coke Can Redesign – Branding and Creativity Lessons 16 Articles on Defining Brand Strategy and Business Branding Topics B2B Direct Branding: Message and Metrics Working Together Brand Strategy – A Strategic Brand Planning Tool by Woody Bendle How to Brand a Company – 7 Types of Brand Language You Should Use. Brainzooming - All Posts Branding Collaboration Communication Marketing Strategic Thinking Strategy brand strategy
BrainZooming
SEPTEMBER 5, 2017
Based on executives visiting the Brainzooming website, there is considerable interest right now in “strategic planning icebreaker activities.” I guess that isn’t surprising. This is the time of year when most organizations that are going to do strategic planning are thinking about it or have already started. 2 New Strategic Planning Icebreaker Activities. Here are two brand new ideas for strategic planning icebreaker activities. Branding and Marketing.
BrainZooming
MAY 31, 2017
These duties would give customers exposure to smart, strategic, and dynamic team members they might never typically know. Are you prepared to take better advantage of your brand’s customer and market insights to generate innovative product ideas? The right combination of outside perspectives and productive strategic thinking exercises enables your brand to ideate, prioritize, and propel innovative growth.
BrainZooming
SEPTEMBER 29, 2017
“Inside the Executive Suite” from Armada Corporate Intelligence featured an article this week with strategic planning questions based on Amazon. Inspired by an article in The Wall Street Journal by professor Scott Galloway, they lay out five strategic imperatives Amazon uses to disrupt markets and grow. Working from Galloway’s analysis, let’s look at how to incorporate a strain of the Amazon strategic success DNA into your own strategy development.
BrainZooming
NOVEMBER 7, 2017
Looking back ten years, suffice it to say that starting to write and publish about the work I was first doing in the Fortune 500 world as a VP of Strategic Marketing and then in launching Brainzooming was one of the most important career decisions I ever made. Asking and answering for all analysis: “What does it mean for our brands, customers, competitors, and/or the market?” This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Brainzooming blog.
BrainZooming
MAY 24, 2017
Beyond trade secrets and insider knowledge that could move markets, organizations consider a wide variety of information as confidential. ” Market-Moving and Insider Information. Information that moves markets, is insider knowledge, contains trade secrets, or has some other legal standing must be handled with the strictest confidence. “What I do in these situations is step back and think about what the information means for daily and longer-term business.
BrainZooming
MARCH 6, 2017
After talking with a friend, I think the percent of time you are told to pull back your creative ideas because they are too big and bold may be a good way to assess how your creativity is faring in an organization. My friend explained that over a period of years, her bosses shot down every dynamic possibility she proposed as a creative marketing idea. Alternatively, you may be in a place that is thinking way too small; you should get out as soon as you can.
BrainZooming
MARCH 13, 2017
That story got me thinking: beyond an outside facilitator, who else is witnessing your innovation strategy development over time and can point to what those closest to it will never see, or at least never mention? If thinking about doing things in new ways is tough for your organization, start looking at an outside-in innovation strategy! – Mike Brown. Are you prepared to take better advantage of your brand’s customer and market insights to generate innovative product ideas?
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