Over the last few months, none of us have been operating as usual. Swift action has taken place in all parts of every business.  Actions that typically would take months of reviews and decision making have been done in weeks, days and hours.  In trying times, we bypass the strict regimen of decision making and discard many of the minor concerns that get in the way of quick decision making. That is possible because business teams have (more…)

CYC, a not for profit needed to drive civic participation amongst young people.
The organisation needed a way to focus their people’s efforts on the strategic plan, as well as save time and drive efficiency. The hard bit was finding a platform that would deliver this, without compromising or restricting people’s passion and creative thought processes.

“Cascade provides an affordable & robust platform for planning, execution & most importantly evaluation. Our team is better empowered to achieve our objectives individually and as a group.”

Entrepreneurs are wired differently than most, often “painting outside the lines,” seeing things others don’t. But their vision, creativity and drive can come with a cost. They under manage and most don’t manage their companies or themselves well.

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Senior Leaders who have performance management and employee engagement as a strategic objective face a conundrum. As we continue to dig into corporate needs, the same message continues to come through. Senior management knows that the economy isn’t going to allow them to resume the upward trajectory of growth like the good old days. As we continue to discuss ways to achieve these objectives, the conversation always comes back to performance management: Doing more with what you have. As any leader knows, (more…)

Successful businesses work. There are many definitions of success in business. One component common to all business success definitions is the generation of positive cash flow in the short-, mid- and long-term. Many variables factor into a business’s ability to generate positive cash flow; from an operations perspective, none are more critical than culture, strategy and execution. In this post we will focus on (more…)

Large cash positions coupled with historically low interest rates make mergers and acquisitions an obvious strategic choice for companies to significantly improve their performance. As companies increase their Mergers and Acquisitions activity, there is a need for a well thought through program assure the successful integration of new companies with different cultures and business processes. It is reported by KPMG that (more…)

I was talking to several CEOs the other day about the challenges of today’s business climate and the parts of our businesses where we can continue to realize productivity gains. We all agreed that opportunities existed throughout our businesses to improve productivity, but quickly honed in on a discussion around how well our employees were aligned with our Vision, Mission, Values and Corporate Objectives. Everyone squirmed for a moment thinking about organizational alignment and organizational development, (more…)

During a keynote address at IIR’s Balanced Scorecard Forum, Robert Kaplan, a leading international business management guru, revealed “that less than 10% of formulated strategies are executed effectively” and an international survey indicated that consistently executing strategic objectives were in the top three concerns of CEO’s and corporate boards. Kaplan also added “that it is a well know fact that organizations who have a formal strategy execution process dramatically outperform the rest”. Effectively and consistently implementing corporate strategy requires all stakeholders to be aligned to those objectives, understand their role in achieving them and be accountable for effective implementation. If your company doesn’t have a formal process, then the hard work is figuring out what one looks like. A strategic execution process must (more…)