Management consultant Daniel Deneffe discusses his unconventional approach to “fad-free” strategy. It starts with a deep customer immersion and works backward to take the guessing game out of strategy formation.
Improving The Odds of Strategy Execution
Everyone has their own definition of business strategy; and as varied as those perspectives may be – Its execution that ultimately determines impact. For years now, I’ve been a keen observer of businesses who excel at the implementation phase of strategy, and the quintessential correlation that I notice among them is always an unbreakable link to their customer.
For nearly three decades, Daniel Deneffe has been on the forefront of strategy design and implementation – both as a professor of business strategy at Harvard Extension School, and as a management consultant. To him, strategy is simply an extension of a relationship you have with your customer, still as you’ll discover during our conversation and in his latest book {with Herman Vantrappen} – Fad-Free Strategy: Rigorous Methods To Help Executives Make Strategic Choices Confidently, those relationships are based on a depth of insight that far exceeds a surface interpretation of one’s purchasing and/or behavioral patterns.
As an intellectual, Daniel is both thorough and detailed in his descriptions, so listen with an open mind as he shares his ideas on the following topics:
- The modern definition of strategy.
- The correlation between effective strategy implementation and consumer insights.
- The trap of strategic thinking.
- What most companies and business schools often get wrong about strategy?
- What you’re likely not seeing when you fail to get the results you desire?
- Why what your customers don’t buy is a better alternative to understanding strategy?
- Why constraints lead to effective strategy?
- The role of pricing in strategy formation?
- Understanding the concept of willingness to pay and willingness to buy?
- Why companies don’t want a competitive advantage as much as they want to maximize commercial returns?
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