Strategic

Return on Investment

The above chart lists college degrees that have the best return on investment. Would your decision on which major to pursue or recommend to your child alter due to this data? If their passion was to teach, would you steer them away due to the projected lack of economic benefit? If they had a pathway to an engineering degree might you devote additional resources to make sure they benefited from the future forecasted earnings?

What program and resource allocation decisions have your enterprise made based on the calculations for return on investment? What if you are uniquely positioned to act but the momentary reward is not sufficient? Where does return on investment rank in your priority of screen questions when debating the merits of future strategy?

Strategic Planning Declines (in gamers)

Quantic Foundry released a study that showed a decade-long drop in strategy as a key characteristic of gamers.

In this light, the decline in Strategy is likely not an idiosyncratic phenomenon among digital gamers, but parallels the general reduction in attention spans observed by researchers in different fields.

How high of a priority is strategy and strategic thinking within your enterprise? Do you see more or less time and resources dedicated to this mindset? In what direction do you believe strategic thinking is headed? If you anticipate the demise of strategy, what attribute will fill the liminal space between action and dreams?

Future Me

When my son confronts a problem he does not want to tackle in real time, he says, ‘That is a future me problem.’ Future Me gets assigned some of the most demanding and daunting items. What if we made a list of the future me problems? How many would become part of your enterprise’s strategic framework? It is painless to leverage the most important to the future while addressing the most urgent in the moment.

The Tui

The Tui is a remarkable bird found in New Zealand and Australia. It has two voice boxes, creates a distinctive call, and can toggle between high and low variants in its song. In addition, it has a white tuff of hair on its throat that’s purpose is still being researched, an evolutionary puzzle yet to be solved.

The Tui is a symbol of the dedicated skill required to blend tactical and strategic perspectives into conversations. The strategic establishes the background and horizon line, and the tactical places the activity and focal points. How might we fuse these two framing elements into a narrative that is accessible and provides additional clarity?