Monday, October 24, 2005

Tips for Strategic Decision-Making

Rob, over at Business Pundit had the opportunity last week to be blogging about entrepreneurship with a number of successful executives. He ran into one such person in the airport, who offered to send him a list of questions he had built-up over the years to help with strategic decision-making.

Some examples include:

What are the success metrics?

What's our rollout strategy if we hit them?

What's our exit strategy if we don't?

Can we take advantage of this initiative across other business units?

Does the story "hang together?" That is, do the key metrics all move in the same direction?

Do initiatives proposed all seem to be prioritizedappropriately and match up well to strategy/identified needs?

BOTTOMLINE: When making strategic decisions, ask yourself these kind of tough questions. Make sure it "feels right" before moving forward. It's better to find out for early (and privately) that something is wrong with your strategy instead of waiting until you have poured significant resources into it -- and your competition can watch you fail.