Let’s all move away from the traditional top-down methodologies and adopt a more collaborative model for business strategy development. While some companies cling to the old ways for a variety of reasons, executives can overcome these barriers and shift to a more participative approach. A collaborative approach allows for a richer field of options, particularly in the idea-generation phase. Think of the first three stages of an ultimately multi-phased approach as your discovery phase: analysis, idea generation, and strategy selection. Then engage an evaluation team of stakeholders to summarize and present those ideas with the most traction to the executive team. From our experience with a variety of organizations around the globe, once you let go of your fears of losing control and adopt a more inclusive approach, you’ll be amazed at the number of viable ideas you would have missed.
