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Strategy types. Now when we first got started on this, it was about ten years ago. My good
friend, John Albright, working for Pfizer, we were doing some work in Japan. And on the
way from Tokyo to Narit airport, he turned over to me while we were in his car and said,"
See, we need something for strategy for field force managers or sales managers." I said,"
John, there is only a thousand books that have been written on strategy. Which one do
you want? I mean, this isn't hard, this isn't difficult." He said, "It's not the traditional
strategy, it's not these kind of strategies that I am looking at." I am looking at depending
on your position in the organization whether you are at the top of the pyramid or just
an entry-level professional responsible for one person, this is a span of control if you
will down here, or if you are responsible for many people." I think there are several
strategies that you can look at. First of all, I think each manager whether they are
part of the senior leadership team or in the middle level or first-line managers, individually
ought to have a strategy. And then the teams they believed, they ought to have their strategy.
Again, many cases link to be aligned with the business strategy but sometimes there
are some independent blue sky initiatives. Some teams may want to explore with and even
every individual contributor right down to accountants, programmers, analysts, specialists
in any field. Each individual, I think, ought to be expected to have a strategy if you work
here. I think it's the only way you can do this. We will give you an edge. That means
you got to be thinking about how you are going to do this in your job, how you are going
to get people on edge. I think that's a great question. Now you here in this room, you are
the ones who tight altogether. If you can see it, if you can take the lead, take the
initiative and say," You know what, we got to ask ourselves where we are going , where
we are headed, what lies ahead, can we look it the future a little bit, can we anticipate
some issues?" We will get into this a lot but I like to call it strategy in the middle.
And that's where our managers are going to lead this charge and again we got senior level
leaders who can put together the grand corporate strategy which we need desperately.. But I
work with a lot of organizations who frankly this is pretty faded blue area right here.
It's pretty weak. The stronger it is, the better it is but it does not take us off the
hook and likewise if that was missing, I keep telling people," Doesn't take you off the
hook for cooking up your own managerial strategy, your team strategy or even right down to the
front line hourly workers need to be thinking about how do I help this corporation business,
sheriff's office, government entity, the successful