Articles
Strategy
March 17, 2011
Getting to “No”: The Three Cs of Strategic Consideration
The essence of strategy is deciding what not to do. This idea was presented by Michael Porter in the 1996 Harvard Business Review article titled, “What is Strategy,” and has proven to be prescient in light of the current strain on the core business models of many nonprofits. Nonprofits have plenty of reasons to say […]
June 04, 2010
Best Practices: The Fallacy of “Plug and Play”
The secret to a good golf game is simple: watch the best players in the world, learn what they do, and simply apply those techniques to your own game. That will make you just as good as them, right? Of course not. There are too many other factors at play to make it that simple: […]
March 23, 2010
Why “Raising Awareness” of Your Organization is Not a Strategic Goal
It is a common topic of discussion when I help an organization develop a strategic plan: how to raise awareness of the organization. The assumption is that if only more people knew about them, then…well, what then? The reality is that not everyone needs to know about your organization and the work that it does. However, it […]
March 15, 2010
What is Strategy?
The title of this entry is taken from an article of the same name, which appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 1996. The article was written by Michael Porter (“we’re not worthy”) and is viewed as a classic in business circles. I have returned to this article on numerous occasions and always come away […]
March 11, 2010
Why Nonprofit Strategic Planning Usually Fails
One of the great ironies surrounding my work as a nonprofit consultant is that I was one of those who had little use for strategic planning. In fact, I hated it. Like many of you, I sat through too many sessions where we were asked (forced?) to brainstorm about the future of our organization, then […]
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