strategy – CainEllsworth

Not Just Numbers

“Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” – Jonas Salk Sometimes as leaders we struggle to figure out what’s next. We know things need to change, whether it’s how we lead, what we expect from our people, what we do for our clients or customers, or any number of other things. There … Read more

Quitting Is Not An Option

“When you have exhausted all the possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.” – Thomas Edison I had a conversation with a leadership team recently that was really frustrated. They felt like their organization was stuck. It wasn’t that things were going poorly, but they weren’t really improving either. It seemed to all of them that … Read more

Change = Learning

“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.” – Archibald MacLeish Change leads to all kinds of things. Excitement, frustration, success, roadblocks, progress and setbacks. And probably a bunch more. Change is a permanent part of the human condition and so are all the things … Read more

No Limits

“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso Many hours have been spent over the years trying to define what characteristics and behaviors define great leaders. Some things show up over and over again – work ethic, intelligence, integrity, etc. Those kinds of things will always matter. The world is always changing, though, and … Read more

You Should Be Fighting

“Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.” – Mahatma Gandhi Today’s conversation is about something that’s both obvious and incredibly difficult. I’m not sure I have anything wise to add, and I know I don’t have any magic bullet to make it easy. Every human being is unique. Each of them has different … Read more

It’s Not about the plan

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell Planning is an important part of leadership. No organization was ever successful for very long without taking time to plan for its future. Regardless of size, purpose, location, or … Read more

Adjust On The Fly

“Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.” – Ann Patchett Last week in this space, the topic was vision. Creating a clear, compelling vision isn’t easy, and most organizations never really get it done. Even organizations that succeed in terms of vision are faced with … Read more

What’s Next?

“It doesn’t pay to worry. If you went through last year’s files marked “important”, chances are the only things you’d keep are the paper clips.” – Robert Orben What keeps you up at night? There’s a laundry list of things leaders can lay awake worrying about if they choose. Markets, people, products, customers, technology, civil … Read more

Make It Matter

“Predicting rain doesn’t count. Building arks does.” – Warren Buffett One of the things you’re supposed to do as a leader is think about the future. It’s why there are so many books/articles/podcasts/whatever on planning, strategic planning, long-term planning, etc. Everybody knows it’s important and understands that it’s something they probably should be doing. Some … Read more

The Starting Point

“Strategic planning is worthless – unless there is first a strategic vision.” – John Naisbitt Last week in this space the conversation was around the idea that at some point everybody has to stop “hunkering down” and start thinking about the future. That means vision, strategy, all that good stuff. Based on some responses I … Read more

GPS Blog

It's time to go "Beyond the Numbers".