Strategy Buzz: Keeping Momentum After Your Retreat

February 5, 2010

How Organizations Can Keep Their Planning Momentum

Finishing up this first week of February marks a time when most companies are just tying up their corporate retreats and strategic planning for the upcoming years.   These last few weeks on Twitter it seems as if everyone is coming or going from their organization’s retreat where they have mapped out their company’s strategic plan.  However, it is apparent that there is a gap between the retreat and the actual execution of the strategic plan.  So, what exactly can your organization do to keep their planning momentum going after their retreat?

Strategic Planning expert, Erica Olsen, tackled this issue in last month’s Strategy Huddle.

How Do We Lose Momentum?

• No progress
• Not relevant
• No WIIFM (what’s in it for me?)
• Canceling meetings
• Feels like busy work

How To Keep Your Momentum:

• Someone needs to own the process of strategic management in the organization
• Need specific tasks & deliverables
• Schedule you strategic update meeting right away (Making it from the retreat to the first update is where most people get lost)
• Energy & focus
• Need to motivate & inspire

Taking some of these thoughts/recommendations will help your organization execute your strategy and keep the planning momentum going after your retreat.

For more information on the latest Strategy Buzz and Other Resources, please visit us at our Resources Page.

If your strategic plan is not agile – don’t bother

January 31, 2010

The Wall Street Journal published an article last week titled “Strategic Plans Lose Favor.” Our commentary about the article’s main point – that CEO’s want strategic plans to help them make decisions, not to be static – is below. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Being Strategic is a process, not rigid set of parameters that hamstring organizations. Contrary to the article, no plan can pretend to “predict the future”, and any decent consultant knows assigning rigidity to a strategic plan is a death blow. However, there are trappings that traditional strategic plans suffer: they aren’t incorporated into regular management reviews, they undergo versioning that does not get properly distributed, or they are not tied into budgetary decisions that must take place… therefore becoming quickly irrelevant.

Strategic plans that have molted away from the trappings of being shelved more than referenced. Success with Strategic Plans comes though a better managed process that is reviewed timely to the specific needs of industry realities. Those that have no direction will never know where they are going.

Leaders should be driving the right strategy with equal effort on execution. Not thinking about strategic planning as a deliverable or an event. Strategy and execution needs to be an agile and adaptive business process. Otherwise this highly valued management tool is irrelevant.

Strategy Buzz: This Week in Twitter Talk

January 29, 2010

Have Strategic Plans Lost Favor?

As I have been sitting and watching Twitter this week it was almost impossible not to notice all the buzz about the Wall Street Journal Article, “Strategic Plans Lose Favor.”   Some very interesting articles & discussions have sprouted out of this article.

LinkedIn Responded in a Tweet: “WSJ says ’strategic plans lose favor’ as companies respond to recession with more speed. So, what do…? #in http://bit.ly/9yJnyc

Another interesting article Tweeted about is “Strategic Planning Changed During the Recession” by Tom Werner.  He quickly highlights some strategic changes & the recession that coincide with the WSJ article here:  http://ow.ly/1nCYpS

So, what do you think?  Have strategic plans lost favor during this economic downturn, or do companies just need to become more agile & responsive?

Don’t Forget About the “How”

January 10, 2010

As hundreds of thousands of organizations are finishing up their strategic planning retreats or offsite meetings this month, more than 70 percent will not take concrete action from those flip charts, sticky notes and whiteboards. Consider the huge cost of labor hours from people sitting in a day or multi-day meeting, only to have that time wasted. Honestly, it is human nature to get excited about a big idea, but then the excitement wanes as we get further and further away from the moment. If you just participated in a retreat, make it your charge to be part of the 30 percent of companies who do take action and here is how.

A fellow strategic planning consultant, Holly Green, wrote a great article that talks about not forgetting about the “how” by breaking down the process of getting from where we are to where we want to go into manageable steps. Below is the cliff notes version (Full Text).

Today to Six Months: Look at the gaps between your current reality and your future state. Determine what incremental steps you must take in operations, people (skills and capabilities), systems and process.

Six to Twelve Months: After you have succeeded in incremental changes, consider what new, substantial actions you need to take to reach your vision. Ideally your substantial actions are lined up to be implemented after your incremental changes have taken place and settled in. Again, consider the substantial actions in the areas of customer, operations, people and process.

Twelve to Eighteen Months and Beyond: Now you are ready to move into transformational change – maybe business model shifts or larger strategy adjustments that seemed impossible 12 months ago.

By thinking about your strategic plan in timed phases, it prevents you and your team from being totally overwhelmed. It also helps you put feet on the ideas from your retreat without thinking you have to perfectly action out the next 3+ years. Obviously the time phased items listed above are fluid and iterative. In my experience as a strategic planning consultant, no one organization will adapt the timed phases the same, but what they all do have in common, and I know you do too,  is the strong will to change happen. So, don’t forget about the “how”.

Employee Engagement Stats from Harvard

December 11, 2009

Harvard Business Publishing recently posted the results of an employee survey to their Daily Stat blog, claiming that employees are more appreciative and enthusiastic about their jobs than a year ago. From 2008 to 2009:

• Employees who take pride in their jobs rose from 71% to 79%
• Those who recommend their employer rose from 53% to 58%

Since MyStrategicPlan is frequently used as an employee engagement tool or performance management software, we take a close look at the general level of engagement found across the US. But just like the writers at the Be Excellent blog, I question whether these findings truly indicate a more engaged workforce.

During the recession, with jobs being scarce, it stands to reason that employees would take pride in their jobs; they actually have jobs, unlike many of their unlucky neighbors.

…And about whether they’d recommend their employer, with so many people out of jobs, almost everyone has a friend who has asked for help looking for employment. If a job opens up at someone’s place of business, they’re far more incentivized to tell their friends about it than they were when jobs were plentiful.

With other recent reports and pundits warning that a recession recovery will present challenges in employee retention, I don’t believe Harvard’s rosy take on their daily stat should be a signal to employers that their people will stay put.

More than ever, it’s time to make sure that your people are engaged, that they see where they fit in your organization and they know how you plan to get where you’re going- together.

Time’s Running out to Unstick Your Strategy at our Next Strategy Huddle!

November 17, 2009

Have a nagging problem with executing your strategy? Feeling Stuck, or just need a boost? Everyone needs help sometimes, and we get that. Well, how does an hour with a set of strategy experts sound?

If you want to get answers for your strategic questions, you need to sign up for MyStrategicPlan’s Strategy Huddle!

Each month, the team here at MyStrategicPlan holds a one-hour special event online that’s geared towards unsticking your strategy and answering your toughest questions- all in real time. You choose the questions and we answer them, and we also allow time for any other great ideas from among our participants. We get participants from a wide range of business sizes, and a wide range of experience levels and titles, so the questions and the answers contain a variety of great business knowledge.

All of this is free, live, and on-line for your convenience.

Our next huddle is tomorrow, so sign up now! December’s Huddle will be on the 16th.

For more information and to sign up for this month’s Huddle, click here.

Photo: Team Unity by Brenda Anderson / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Boy Scouts of America Planning for the Next 100 Years

November 5, 2009

We have recently taken on a new client at M3 Planning, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).  We took part in a nationwide call this morning to conduct a forum style discussion on the new approach that the BSA is taking as they come up on their 100^th anniversary.  The BSA and M3 Planning have worked together for the last few months to create an online tool and supporting resources to take the councils to a higher level with cutting edge tools.  It was interesting to listen to the discussions between the senior executives, the in-house strategic planning leadership, and the individual council leadership.

The BSA has in the past done what many non-profit organizations have done and that is just follow the same steps in creating their strategic plan each year, focusing on the areas that are of most interest to them and checking a box that it is complete.  What they weren’t doing was taking an objective look at the national or council level to determine where they should really be focusing their attention.  With our assistance, they have developed a Business Report Card survey, based on the Balanced Scorecard from Harvard, for their key stakeholders and volunteers to take.  This survey is designed to give each council a more comprehensive view of where their strengths and weaknesses are, so they can see what areas they really need to focus their attention on to achieve success.  As Howard Olsen, of M3 Planning, said, “It is a health check for the councils.”

One of the areas that everyone on the call was in agreement on was that the BSA needed to get more buy-in from the volunteers if they were going to move forward and face the challenges of the next 100 years.  With the use of MyCouncilPlan, created by M3 Planning, each council will be able to create a strategic plan with cascading goals that show each volunteer how their small part contributes to the overall success of the council.  As an online tool, MyCouncilPlan will allow volunteers the ability to follow the progress of the plan at any time without having to contact the council office as well as force accountability as it sends reminders to each person about their responsibilities and requires them to update their progress on a regular basis.

As Gary Butler, BSA Assistant Chief Executive / Council Operations said at the end of the call, “It is an exciting time for the Boy Scouts of America.”

Need a Strategic Nudge? Have a Nagging Question? Huddle Up with Us!

October 30, 2009

For everyone who wishes they had their very own strategic planning expert whose brain they could personally pick in order to get unstuck, we’ve got a solution for you!

Once a month, the M3 Planning team will be conducting a strategy huddle- where we’ll answer real questions that our audience has been facing. All of the questions are posed by you, and we answer them in a one-hour live session!

In order to get in on the next one on November 18, 2009, you’ll need to register on our Strategy Huddle page. Hurry up, though, as space will fill up!

Jim Collins’ 3 Top Ten Lists

Need some inspiration? In the world of Business Management, few minds stand out like that of Jim Collins, author of the classics Good to Great, Built to Last, and most recently How the Mighty Fall. Through the years, countless business people, organization members, students and folks from all walks of life have sought to learn from Collins’ wisdom.

So, I figure, why not see what he likes to read?

Not only that, let’s see what his top ten book recommendations, class recommendations and task recommendations are for the rest of us. So here, I’ve collected 3 top ten lists that I found on the Growth Guy’s website and from GovernmentExecutive.com.

Jim Collins’ Top Ten Books

1. Churchill, The Second World War
2. Caro, Master of the Senate
3. Goodwin, Team of Rivals
4. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
5. Lewis, Moneyball
6. Homer, The Iliad
7. Drucker, The Effective Executive
8. Gardner, Self-Renewal
9. Lewis, Assault on Lake Casitas
10. Manchester, Goodbye Darkness

Jim Collins’ Top 10 To-Do List for Leaders

1. Download the free Good to Great diagnostic tool from JimCollins.com and use it as the basis for assessment, conversation and planning with your team.
2. Answer these questions for your organization:  What are the key seats on our bus and are those seats filled with the right people?
3. Establish a personal board of directors for yourself.  When you create your board, choose the members based on their characters, not their accomplishments.
4. Get young people (i.e. Gen Y’s) – the right ones – in your face.
5. Turn off your gadgets and create some regular white space for thinking.
6. Build a leadership council for your organization to engage in dialogue, debate and disagreement.
7. Check in on your questions to statements ratio and set a goal of doubling it in the next year.  An early mentor to Collins observed that he seemed to be more interested in being interesting than being interested.  That’s what caused Collins to focus on his own questions to statements ratio.
8. Start working on your stop doing list.  (A good reason not to start trying to do all ten of these tips at once.)
9. Make sure that the core values and purpose of your organization are established early.  It will be too late to do so when the tough times inevitably come.
10. Set your BHAG’s (Collins’ acronym for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) 10 to 15 years out based on your experience to date.

Jim Collins Top 10 Great Courses from The Teaching Company

1. How to Listen to and Understand Great Music by Robert Greenberg.
2. Great American Presidents
3. Argumentation – The Study of Effective Reasoning
4. What are the Chances? Probability Made Clear
5. Economic History of the United States, 1900 – 2000
6. Art Across the Ages
7. Dante’s Divine Comedy
8. Emperors of Rome
9. The History of Ancient Egypt
10. History of Modern Russia + From Yao to Mao – 5000 years of Chinese History

Great Find: Fast Company’s 30 Second MBA

October 29, 2009

30 Second MBA

We recently stumbled upon a great resource for managers and business people of all levels- over at Fast Company’s website they’ve got a great section called the “30 Second MBA.” With all of our busy schedules, getting management advice in under a minute sounds great!

The “classes” are short videos that cover the same subject each week, with a new video every weekday on relevant subjects such as sustainability or even giving presentations. Below the videos, you’ll find discussions and even what’s being said about them on Twitter. I’ve been checking them out this week and I definitely recommend taking a minute or two (you can watch four!) to see for yourself.

What To Do When Your Planning Budget Gets Cut

October 28, 2009

budget cuts

With stories of budget cuts (both in the public and private sectors) filling the business news, it has become a reality in the recession that in order to plan for the future, agencies and organizations must work with less resources. But how do you plan on a tight budget? Below, we’ve got some things for you to focus on.

Focus on your core outcomes that your citizens/customer must have

When your agency is sitting down to determine your strategic plan in a recession, you must first decide what your stakeholders must have. Without stretching your already thin budget too much, get a feel for what counts most to your people. If you don’t have the resources to perform a formal survey, create a weighted grid of your most pressing issues and have your managers vote on which are most important to their constituents.

Get clear on what is really your core and what you are best at

Look to your current strategic plan: what are your core competencies? Focusing on these will almost always bring you the greatest return. If you have to drop something, one way to base your decision on which to cut would be to forgo initiatives that fall outside of your strengths so that you can still focus on areas in which your organization or agency excels at.

Figure out how to work across dept lines to get more done

Cooperation is key during a recession. Infighting and political battles only drain resources, as does duplication of services. When budgets get cut, some merging of department resources may be necessary. Who within your organization has a reputation for fostering cooperation? They can be a great asset in heading up cooperative initiatives. Which departments are known not to work well together? These will require special attention.

If you have good stuff in your plan, then push the initiatives out a few years

When all else has been done to stretch your budget, there still may be initiatives that you believe shouldn’t be cut but you just don’t have the budget to make them happen right now. Delaying them or stretching the due date may be your solution- and at your next strategy meeting you can re-visit these initiatives you may find that the budget to implement them has surfaced.

Creative Problem Solving: Uncork Your Mind

October 27, 2009

So, you have a problem you need to solve in your business. You know what you need, but you don’t seem to have the resources to take care of it. What do you do?

• Do you complain to upper management?
• Do you pressure your people to do the impossible?
• Do you give up?

Presented with a real-life, high-pressure crisis, the man in this video displays the kind of courage, creativity and resilience that we all need to see in business today:

Post-Recession Planning: Employee Retention Will Present a Challenge

October 26, 2009

Planning for the recession to be over? Good. For most companies, that means decisions involving being able to meet increased demand, taking advantage of new opportunities, even renegotiating contracts with vendors or suppliers.

But, what if you lose a bunch of your employees?

Wait, losing employees? Aren’t they happy they even have jobs in an economy like this? True, right now you could look at the economy as an employer’s market- for every job posting right now there’s several times the applicants than there were a couple years ago. We recently caught this bit on a New York Hospitality Services Blog:

One consequence of the severity of the recession has been a surfeit of talent across industries looking for opportunities as few, if any, employers were hiring. That may change sooner than later as this survey by Intuit, a provider of payroll services finds that “that (of) nearly half of small business owners surveyed, 44 percent, are planning to hire new employees within the next 12 months. At the same time, many small business owners believe that benefits are key to attracting new hires but are finding them difficult to afford.”  Interesting findings of that survey include the fact that family and friends of current employees make for good new hires as well as that long term relationships with employees matter.

So, as the economy eases out of recession, we may see a massive surge in hiring- which means it’s more important than ever to keep your employees engaged. Forbes.com also weighs in on the issue with an analogy and some wise words:

Employees are like elephants: They watch, and they remember. They know how they were treated in the bad times, and how their fallen colleagues were treated, too. They form long-lasting impressions of their employers. And they are already planning what to do about it.

I’m not sure that your employees will want to be compared to elephants, but the fact remains that businesses need to be serious about employee satisfaction and employee engagement as the recession lifts, or else they could find their best and brightest lured away.

Agile Strategy: What to Focus on

October 25, 2009

These days, things change fast. With a global economic crisis raging, the world has become less stable, less predictable than it once was. New opportunities and threats raise their heads daily, and companies who can identify them and respond the quickest are reaping the benefits.

Because of this, we’re seeing the word “agile” used more and more. Agile development, agile programming, agile strategy: everyone wants to be nimble- be quick. So, what should your organization focus on if you want to have an agile strategy?

Connect with your market

• Don’t let your data sit around expired
• Don’t delay when you encounter a roadblock

The first thing you need in order to be agile is great, current data. How old is your most recent environmental analysis? When’s the last time you conducted a SWOT analysis? Agile organizations are great at scanning their surroundings on a regular basis. It’s no good to you to know what your industry did last quarter if you still don’t have a plan to use that information.

In addition, don’t get tripped up on making sure your data is perfect. Many a strategic plan has been made powerless through data paralysis. Search out what you can and go with it.

Make quick decisions

• Use trusted methods
• Don’t just go for consensus

Do you know how to make decisions fast? If you’ve got a list of 10 opportunities but only have the resources to pursue three, then you need to know how best to trim your list. Emotions, politics or alphabetical order won’t help here. For information on making decisions, see our post, How to Evaluate Your Opportunities Strategically.

Also, remember that sometimes consensus works against you. If you’re trying to make sure everyone is on board 100% of the time, you’re most likely going to slow down your organization and make a lot of bad decisions. Good strategy doesn’t have to make everyone happy- it’s got to lead your organization towards success.

Drive your strategy through your organization

• Leadership Unity
• Communication

In order to make sure your organization moves quickly to implement your strategic decisions, it’s imperative that your leadership supports both your plan and each other. One of the most common reasons that strategic initiatives miss their mark is lack of support or understanding from leaders- it’s not that everyone must agree on everything- but you need to make sure you’re all on the same page.

Clearly communicating your strategy is also key. Don’t pull in the communication consultants only after the strategy has fallen flat- find out beforehand how best to talk to your people about your strategic direction.

Remain Fluid with your Resources

• Ensure that your resources can be reallocated
• Make sure everything isn’t tied up

All this talk about great data, quick decisions and whatnot won’t help you at all if the resources needed to implement your strategy are all locked up. If you’ve invested all you have in your current direction, you won’t be able to change it when new data leads to decisions to jump on an opportunity.

Your Got Budget Cut? Have a DIY Strategy Session to get Ready for 2010

October 10, 2009

With budgets tight, not everyone can afford to have a week-long strategy retreat in the mountains. If a facilitator is outside of your means, and you can’t have your people missing a ton of time to conduct your strategy session this year, consider having a one-day DIY strategy session.

Lock the doors. Turn off the phones. Ignore your e-mail. Pull your team together for one long strategy session. And don’t leave the room until the plan is done.

A couple of things can make this process go more smoothly:

• Have a clear agenda and a timekeeper. Move on to the next item when the time allotted is up.
• Come prepared with your internal and external analysis data and research. Ideally, have everyone read the material ahead of time.
• Appoint a person to organize the plan based on the work completed. This person should also take complete notes of the session for reference after the strategy session.
• Take a break every one and a half to two hours. Make sure that you’re in a place that’s easy to get outside for some fresh air.
• Have a lot of snack foods and order in a good lunch. Everyone likes to munch.
• Plan some fun games. You can only work so hard for so long, so reward your team by having fun during the day or a nice outing afterwards. You can build games into the strategic planning process. Because your time is compressed, make sure to limit any games to 15 to 20 minutes.

Dilbert Comic Strip: Strategy Meeting

September 24, 2009

Innovative Approach: Making Wikipedia’s Strategic Planning as Open as Their Data

September 23, 2009

Over at Harvard Business’s Conversation starter, there’s a great article about Wikimedia’s undertaking of crafting a strategic plan. You would think that an organization that built and supports Wikipedia- a free online encyclopedia that began as a modest effort to capture information and now boasts more than 3,ooo,ooo articles, would have to have been a product of a far-reaching strategy. Actually, no. This plan will be their first.

That’s right. They got this far without a strategy- and now, they face the daunting task of creating one for their future. What different factors needed to be considered when crafting this plan? According to the HBC post, the following questions arose:

• How to prioritize growth initiatives that involve reaching every single human being?
• How to make ever increasing amounts of knowledge freely sharable? How to cultivate a healthy, growing and diverse community of contributors?
• How to enhance quality of knowledge?
• How to ensure Wikimedia has the resources and capabilities to sustain its work in perpetuity?

And what was their answer? The strategic planning team has taken a bold move. Because they’re dealing with an encyclopedia that is user-edited, and open source- they decided there was one direction they could take this project. They’re making the process as open-sourced as possible. Ultimately the community of Wikipedia users will guide and drive the process- and they are adopting the following core principles to guide them:

• Anchor on the vision: Wikimedia has a powerful vision (”a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all human knowledge”) that serves as a touchstone for the strategy process
• Do it the Wiki way: Open, transparent and evolving deliberations that trust in the constructive spirit of diverse volunteers to bring powerful expertise and perspective
• Use the best of nonprofit strategy know-how: Drive dialogue and decisions from facts and rigorous analysis of options; Focus on the most critical decisions that will drive large scale impact; tackle questions that require “values” choices explicitly
• Presume good faith: People are engaging with Wikimedia in the best spirit of volunteerism and contribution to social good and will act with the best motives
• Learn and change: Try stuff, If it doesn’t work stop, and try something else

Over the next several months, it will be interesting to see the course that this project will take. What do you think about this approach? Should they have taken it? Will they be successful? We can’t wait to see what is learned from this unique and innovative technique.

Still Unconvinced About the Power of Employee Engagement? Look at the Data

September 15, 2009

A recent study of more than 300 organizations by the Aberdeen Group, titled, Beyond Satisfaction: Engaging Employees to Retain Customers, speaks volumes about the power of employee engagement.

Organizations who practice employee engagement report the following results:

• 22% year-over-year improvement in customer satisfaction/loyalty
• 21% year-over-year improvement in turnover/retention

In addition, the study reveals that eight in ten of these top companies attribute changes in profitability and/or revenue DIRECTLY to employee engagement initiatives. According to the Aberdeen Group, it’s never been more obvious that employee engagement is a necessary element in any organization.

“Top companies are moving beyond employee satisfaction — a one-way street which only measures if the employees needs are being met by the organization — to employee engagement, which is all about aligning individual, organizational and customer needs,” comments Mollie Lombardi, research analyst, Aberdeen. “It is no wonder that companies who provide their leaders with tools and training to engage their employees are achieving impressive business impact.”

If you haven’t been taking employee engagement seriously in your strategic implementation, why not? Instead of trying to keep employees happy or just keep them around- organizations must actively engage employees in creating their future and their usefulness within the organization- especially in a time when no one can afford the costly loss of employees.

How to Choose a Market Development Strategy

September 14, 2009

You can grow by leveraging your product knowledge to reach new customers.  More than likely, you have spent time and money developing your product and service offering. Assuming you’re happy with your current offering, extending it into new markets is a logical next step. This is aptly called a market development strategy. If you have identified potential new markets as opportunities, use these strategies to reach them.  Here are some quick considerations to make before executing a market development strategy:

• Is the market attractive? (To really answer this question, I recommend some form of market research to validate your gut feeling.)
• Are you willing to commit the required time and resources to reach this new market?
• Can your business be adapted to the new market?
• Will you maintain your current competitive advantage in this new market?

Expanding Geographically

When you’re thinking about expanding, first think about where you want to cultivate new business. You have options: other regions, nationally, or internationally.  Geographical expansion works well for a company that wants to expand its service territory because it needs a physical location to serve its customers. Clearly your ability to expand is subject to your ability to finance such as expansion. See “Executing Your Growth Strategy” later in this chapter.  Many of the big boys of business, including McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot, have exported their operations to other countries. On a smaller scale, many microbreweries have opened up new locations in various metro areas and airports in the United States as a way to expand their geographical reach.

Reaching into new market segments

You can also grow by reaching a completely new set of customers or market segments. This area is such a popular growth strategy because you leverage the products and services you already have developed. (Flip to Chapter 11 for the entire story on new market segments.)

Examples of this strategy abound, such as Bayer aspirin now being sold not just for aches and pains, but also for heart attack prevention if taken daily.

Choosing a Product Development Strategy

September 13, 2009

If you have a good understanding of your market, another way to leverage your knowledge is to develop new products and services to meet this market’s needs. If you hear the term product development, you may think about brand new products, but that’s not necessarily the case.

Executing a product development strategy can happen by adding more value to your existing product through features, upselling, or cross selling. The best thing about this strategy is you’ve already established yourself in your current markets and you know what your customers want. You have the distribution channels, and you know how to reach them.

Consider the following questions if you’re thinking about expanding your product line or developing new products:

• Will your customer benefit from the added value or new feature? Are they asking for additions to the current product line?
• Do potential manufacturing, marketing, and distribution cost efficiencies exist from an expanded product line? Can you share current costs across the new products or services?
• Can your current assets, brand, marketing, and distribution be used with the new product?
• Do you have the skills and capabilities to develop and produce the products proposed?

After you’ve given product development some consideration, and you’ve decided to proceed full steam ahead, here’s how to develop new products and services to meet your market’s needs:

• Add new features or services by extending your current products. For example, cell phone companies add on media packages for text messaging, additional ring tones, and Internet access. Here are a few ways to extend your current offering:
  • Adapt (to other ideas and developments)
  • Modify (change color, motion, sound, odor, form, shape)
  • Magnify (more for a higher price, stronger, longer, extra value)
  • Reduce (smaller, trial version, shorter, lighter)
  • Substitute (other ingredients, processes, power)
  • Combine (other options, products, ideas, assortments)
• Develop additional models and sizes of your current products. For example, the iPod expanded to the iPod mini and the iPod nano.
• Develop totally new products. In this case, you usually leverage your brand recognition. Some good examples of this development are Gerber producing baby clothes and a CPA firm expanding from tax work into financial planning.