Influx

This month’s Strategy & Business magazine has a great article by Ram Charan entitled “Sharpening your Business Acumen?

The premise of the article is how companies can benefit from seeing the big picture. Ram gives lots of good examples from the likes of Apple, GE, BP and Verizon and boils it all down to 6 six essential questions that companies need to ask themselves.

The beauty of these questions is that the flow from trend insight through to an actionable deliverable.

1. What is happening in the world today?
2. What does it mean for others?- what can we learn from how this will impact others?
3. What does it mean for us?
4. What would have to happen first? what needs to happen for the future to happen?
5. What do we have to do to play a role?
6. What do we do next?

In a world where everyone is just trying to react, having an integrated discipline and process to capture the big picture and act against it, is one way of staying ahead.