SKYE Business Solutions

December is a time to celebrate the successes of the past year, reflect on failures, and recharge for the coming year. How well have you done? Whether company-wide or departmental, your strategic plan (or functional business plan) tells the tale. The scoreboard doesn’t lie. Even if you are not at your fiscal year-end, it’s important [...]

If strategic planning is important enough for people to devote substantial amounts of their time to it, they deserve a neutral, professional facilitator to ensure the meeting flows smoothly, everyone participates, all agenda items are thoroughly discussed and difficult decisions are made. The Top Seven: Compelling Reasons for a Facilitated Strategic Planning Session The results [...]

The purpose of strategic planning is to align and focus your entire workforce on a defined direction for the organization – that is goals, objectives, success factors, and key measures. It sounds simple, right? But business leaders know it can be very difficult to successfully achieve. Even when the plan seems perfect it doesn’t necessarily [...]

The health of your business is very similar to your personal health. For example, the benefit of a regular checkup is it ensures that you stay on a path for sustained success. While many business leaders begin each year with a revitalized annual business plan, some forget the essential mid-year checkup. To ensure you’re moving [...]

  U.S. Government data indicates that 8 out of 10 business start-ups fail. Even if the ratio improved to 5 out of 10 it’s not a very comforting thought for an entrepreneur starting a new business. What I find amazing is that many failures can be averted with a shift in a few leadership behaviors. [...]

We’re constantly being bombarded with the “newest” and the “latest and greatest” gadget or gimmick that promises to solve all our problems and make the world a better place. You know what I’m talking about. Infomercials peddle miracle pills that will make you skinny and detergents that will clean the ocean (slight exaggeration). In the [...]

Sports analogies are often overplayed, but it’s hard to resist thinking about football when discussing measures of success for strategic and business plans. What would the Super Bowl be like without first-down markers and a scoreboard? For all involved, the game would be almost meaningless. Like football, business revolves around plans, people, action, and various [...]

You may have spent hours or even days developing your annual business plan… now what? The logical answer is a comprehensive communications plan so the business plan is shared with the entire organization, right? This sounds easy enough but does not answer the “why” and the “how.” Understanding the “why” will give us the “how.” [...]

As I was preparing to speak at a recent event, I noticed a quotation stenciled on the conference room wall. The quote, from Nolan Bushnell, an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari and the Chuck E. Cheese’s chain, really grabbed my attention. It says plenty about the significance of putting ideas into action: [...]