When I started this blog, I decided to call it “On Strategy,” stealing the title of an excellent book by Colonel Harry Summers Jr., analyzing America’s failings in Vietnam. I’m doing some studies right now on the Operational level of warfare and I thought I’d talk a bit about the different terms.
Another reason I felt [...]
Introduction
Sometimes you’re exposed to information before you are ready to effectively use it. This was the way I was when I first read Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits For Highly Effective People. I was in my twenties and while the material was OK, it didn’t really resonate for me. When I found myself rereading the [...]
INTRODUCTION:
The Marine Corp Planning Process (MCPP) is in some ways a capstone on my earlier articles*. In some ways it is extraneous to them. If you are doing planning at a level lower than a battalion (an organization of more than 500 people), you develop your plan using all the previous tools more or [...]
Introduction
Any organization in the Marine Corps has (or is supposed to have) a “Mission-Essential Task List” (METL) that outlines the abilities they need to be able to do to accomplish their mission. This article will introduce the concept of METL, talk about how you can create a METL for your business, and discuss some [...]
The May issue of the Journal of Marketing had an interesting article, “Marketing Under Uncertainty: The Logic of an Effectual Approach,” by Read, Dew, Sarasvathy, Song, and Wiltbank. It looked at how the approach to starting a business differs between successful entrepreneurs and people with little entrepreneurial experience.
The authors suggest [...]
Not everything you do at work is project-oriented; everything doesn’t have a beginning, middle, and end. Some things are ongoing and require your attention every day. Sometimes a management task doesn’t lend itself to an involved process. At times like that, it is helpful to have a “yardstick” handy, a maxim that [...]
Recently, I read an article in the May issue of the Journal of Marketing, “Marketing Under Uncertainty: The Logic of an Effectual Approach.” The authors suggest that people with little entrepreneurial experience look to a venture by identifying an opportunity, examining competition, identifying the market, developing a marketing strategy based on your market segmentation, lining [...]
Earlier, I talked about how Commander’s Intent, a part of the Five Paragraph Order, that can help you motivate your employees and foster initiative and teamwork. Today we’re going to be taking a closer look at the rest of the Five Paragraph Order.
The Five Paragraph Order, or O-SMEAC, breaks a plan of action down [...]
Don’t Forget About Competitive Advantage
