Strategic Planning and Vision Boards

Strategic planning is something that likely everyone in business is familiar with. Its value in the corporate world has been known for years, and there are countless firms and consultants for hire that will help a struggling business find their footing. One of these consultants, Mr. Rainer Strack, has extrapolated this strategic planning from the corporate world into the lives of individuals. The purpose? To create the lives we want to be living.

As Strack explains: “Life strategy is an integrated set of choices that positions a person to live a great life.” By using tools from the corporate world, his method helps people find answers to the questions below so individuals can make better decisions that ultimately lead them down the paths they would ideally choose to walk. Basically, Strack and his team broke down the questions they pose to a business:

1. How does the organization define success?

2. What is our purpose?

3. What is our vision?

4. How do we assess our business portfolio?

5. What can we learn from benchmarks?

6. What portfolio choices can we make?

7. How can we ensure a successful, sustained change?

…and adapted them for individuals:

1. How do I define a great life?

2. What is my life purpose?

3. What is my life vision?

4. How do I assess my life portfolio?

5. What can I learn from benchmarks?

6. What portfolio choices can I make?

7. How can I ensure a successful, sustained life change?

With this method, users can examine which areas of their lives need improvement (positive emotions, relationships, vitality, etc.). They can then get into some self-reflection on what makes them tick, what their skills and values are, and will come out of this step with a statement of purpose and vision. In an even deeper level of self-examination, Strack and his team have users actually break down how much time they spend on common things in the 168-hour week. Everything from health and wellness activities, to time-wasters like excessive social media use are on there. Once those are quantified, users can decide on which of these areas actually need the appropriate amount of time, and which things they can kick to the curb. As Strack explains in the accompanying video, some users actually uninstalled their social media apps from their phones during the consulting process once they realized how much time they were spending on things like Instagram and TikTok.

This incredible approach to self-reflection will take a few hours, but in the end, it’s possible you’ll end up with a single page summary of what you want your life’s plan to look like. There’s even a printable worksheet to go along with it that can be filled out to help the process along. Check out the full article here and get ready to strategize your life in a whole new way.

How to Think Like a Scientist

It’s not often that we see the scientific community equated to the business community. Although there is some obvious overlap, the processes through which each makes decisions, solves problems, and is ultimately successful are vastly different. Now, though, Vistage’s own Marc Emmer has made the argument that perhaps it’s time for the two modes of thinking to collide.

In his new piece titled Business Strategy: Why We Need to Think Like Scientists, Emmer argues that approaching business strategy from the viewpoint of a sicentists can help us be more humble, to accept criticism, and to accept the opinions and ideas of others. Ego, he says, has no place in strategy formation. Humility, grace, and the ability to think things through are what will spark confidence in our decisions, and ultimately our success.

Emmer goes on to lay out an eight-point method for both gathering and evaluating data that will elevate your business strategy and approach to common problems. Check it out, and turn your office into your new lab (of sorts).