Strategic Thinking & Strategic Action

Fostering strategic thinking and strategic action by organizational leaders since 2007.

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What if your strategy could talk back?
Strategy Lee Crumbaugh Strategy Lee Crumbaugh

What if your strategy could talk back?

Good strategic thinking needs more than answers. It needs good questions. Over time.

What are you assuming? What might you be missing? Does your strategy really address the goal? What would have to be true for this to work?

Many strategies never get questioned. They are written, approved, and then left alone, as if putting them down settled the matter.

A strategy that could actually talk back, that continued to push on your assumptions instead of sitting quietly where you left it, would catch what a perfectly written plan never will: the moment it stopped being right.

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The worst accident: “We’re going!”
Decision making Lee Crumbaugh Decision making Lee Crumbaugh

The worst accident: “We’re going!”

On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 passenger jets, KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife. Of the 644 people aboard the two 747s, 583 were killed and only 61 survived. This was the worst accident in aviation history. The massive investigation of and subsequent reports on the Tenerife airport disaster offer deep insight into what happened and what went wrong. As a result, aviation authorities and airlines worldwide changed procedures. But they are insufficient to explain why the KLM 747 collided with the Pan Am 747. Explaining the “why” of the disaster leads us to our great concern, bad decisions and what to do to avoid them when making a good decision is imperative for a mission-critical outcome.

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