Here’s a rule of thumb: During a downturn, executives are much more likely to think change is necessary. In a similar fashion, during times of great growth, we assume that what we’re doing is causing the desired results so staying the course makes sense. Neither point of view is necessarily true. It could be that a rising or falling tide lifts or lowers all boats, and what our strategy needs to do is propel our organizations to better than general market outcomes!
There’s a way to bringing teams together to look at organizational trade-offs—decisions across all areas of their business or department. Remember “White Boarding” – the tool we use to envision new horizons, new products, new opportunities, new growth? Well here’s a tool to help make tough decisions – MurderBoarding™
The opposite of white boarding, is MurderBoarding, we select from among the many initiatives to choose only the best. The desire is to cull and eliminate. Many times resources are wasted because we try to do too much. MurderBoarding is a process that helps narrow opportunities so that decisions can be made. This methodology invites us to narrow our focus to what is critical, what is crucial.
MurderBoarding is the opportunity to let some things really flourish by trimming off the excess that can distract you and your staff. By killing those time and resource draining activities, the company or department gets “pruned” so it can come back better, stronger for it. And in reality, it’s less about “killing ideas” than putting them into purgatory so they can be resurrected when the time is right.
CEO, strategist, and author Nilofer Merchant is a leading authority on creating business strategy to win markets. She honed her unique, collaborative approach to solving tough problems while working with and for companies like Adobe, Apple, Nokia and others.
As Rubicon’s founder and CEO, Nilofer leads a distinguished team of operational veterans. Her firm works with global corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Pinnacle, Logitech, Openwave, Symantec, among others, to create solutions to win markets.
Nilofer’s keynote presentations attract SRO crowds at business leadership events, technology expos, women’s conferences, and universities, ranging from AjaxWorld, CTIA, and PBWC, to Stanford. She’s won multiple awards for her insights on applying strategic thinking and innovation, and has been quoted or published in major business publications such as BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal.
She earned an MBA from Santa Clara University, a BS in Economics from University of San Francisco, and is a certified by Interaction Associates as an Instructor of Facilitative Leadership. Her book on the art of collaborative strategy creation, The New How, was published by O’Reilly Media in Fall 2009.
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Comments
not quite what I expected, but will take something from it. Theory is interesting, but perhaps work pinning it to publishing a little more, before talking at a publishing conference, would be an idea?
Hey Allison, not quite beaming, but a video of this workshop will be available soon!
Wish I could beam this information into the minds of our exec. dir. and senior manager group. We’re in the middle of strategy creation effort now.