In order to prepare the Year 2010,
the “Strategic Diamond”* could be the right tool.

It’s a simple method that helps you to think about your strategic priorities and to set up an action plan. In three steps, you can easily draw up your Strategic Action Plan for 2010

1Define your vision by asking two questions:

What’s my ambition for 2010, which means what do you dream of achieving next year?
What are the changes in your environment that you should take into account?

2Answer to the six questions of the Strategic Diamond:

• What should I reduce ?


• What should I eliminate ?


• What should I raise ?


• What should I create ?


• What should I simplify ?


• What should I magnify ?

 

3Among your answers to the six questions, select those that seem to be  strategic priorities depending on impact, urgency and feasibility criteria.

Then, for each selected priority, define a precise agenda, the resources needed and KPI’s: Key Success Indicators.

The Strategic Diamond can be applied to different situations :

• to your career: how do you want to work in 2010? What do you really want to achieve ?
• to your private life: what do you want your life to look like in 2010 ?
• with your team: what do you want to achieve as a team in 2010?
• with your colleagues or executives: what would be the priorities that will help us (at the department level or at corporate level ) to make a real difference on the market in 2010? ?

Mark Raison has developed this method for his strategic seminars.  It’s inspired by the Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create Grid of  “The Strategy of the Blue Ocean”, Renée Mauborgne and Chan Kim’s best-seller, book translated in more than forty languages. (see pages 34 to 37).

To read: MAUBORGNE Renée and KIM Chan W., Blue Ocean Strategy, Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 2005, ISBN 1-59139-619-0, pages 34-37.

*An Hyper-Creativity Tool