Rowan Spazzoli

I’ve spent a good amount of time today thinking about my last lecture tomorrow. The topic of the lecture is leadership, which is something I’ve lectured on before. However, I’m really struggling to put the lecture together.

I think this is because I really want to leave the students with some lasting lessons. I want my final lecture to have impact, to leave them inspired.

At this point, I still have no idea what these lessons are going to be. But I’m hoping that I’ll have some sort of epiphany in the morning that’ll lead to some really great lessons for the students.

Will report back on whether this actually happens :’)

Image is of an albino squirrel, taken in the company gardens

Song of the day: Tom Rosenthal - Was it you who I saw?

Blog 131/365. Read more about my #365of25 journey here

Over the last few days I’ve been looking at the “Four Hallmarks of Bad Strategy” from Richard Rumelt’s book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Each of these will be linked to a South African example and concluded with a tip to avoid that element of bad strategy.

The fourth and final element of bad strategy that Rumelt highlights is that of “bad strategic objectives”. He explains that there there are two types of bad strategic objectives:

1. Dogs dinner objectives: instead of having one or two key strategic objectives, an organisation will try to write up a wish list.
2. Blue sky objectives: a “blue sky objective” is a simple statement with no path to achieve it

South African Example: Kauai Straws

I saw a great example of this the other day. I was at Kauai and noticed that they’d put a sign up that said they were no longer serving their drinks with straws. This is a really great initiative because single use straws are an unnecessary waste.

However, the sign also read that if you did want a straw you could ask the cashier for one. And clearly the cashier had gotten frustrated with this, so they moved the straws to next to the sign.

This nullified Kauai’s entire strategic objective to eliminate straws. Because it was a “blue sky” objective that didn’t have a path to achieve it

Setting good strategic objectives

Setting better strategic objectives involves two main considerations. First, keep them simple and focused. Test them by seeing if they can be recited easily by anyone they apply to.

Secondly, set objectives that have paths to achieving them. If you want to remove the straws, find a substitute or get rid of them entirely. Set tangible links to how your strategy will be successful, otherwise it is meaningless.

Image was taken at the Kauai 

Song of the day: Mitis - Away

Blog 120/365. Read more about my #365of25 journey here

Over the next few days I’ll be looking at the “Four Hallmarks of Bad Strategy” from Richard Rumelt’s book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Each of these will be linked to a South African example and concluded with a tip to avoid that element of bad strategy.

The third element of bad strategy that Rumelt highlights is that of “mistaking goals for strategy”. He explains that many people and organisations set goals that they expect to act as their strategies. The example he uses is a company with the following “Strategy”:

“We want to grow revenues at more than 20% per year with margins at 20% or more” is mistaking goals for strategy”

Student Strategies

There was a student last year that told me their strategy was to get 75% or more for the course. Although this is an admirable goal, it isn’t a real strategy. There are many ways that it can be improved on. For example, having a set of coherent actions instead of just an objective would turn it into a strategy.

It’s easy to fall into the pitfall of substituting goals for strategy. The best way to test your strategy for this is to simply ask, “how?” If your strategy is even partly able to answer this then you’re on the right track.

Image was taken at the start of the Cape Town Marathon.

Song of the day: Day I Die - The National

Blog 119/365. Read more about my #365of25 journey here

Note this post was a little late, I thought I’d queued one up for yesterday but turns out I hadn’t 🙂