Who’s sitting at your strategy table—from OUTSIDE the building—helping your organization embrace reality and think about future strategy? About managing future issues? About leadership into an unknown future? If you answered nobody, you’re part of the norm and not the exception. Check out this slide presentation on why you must have an AdviceSquad. For more information on strategy and change: http://yellowchairstrategy.com/

1. Who’s sitting at your strategy table—from OUTSIDE the
building—helping your organization embrace reality and
think about future strategy? About managing future
issues? About leadership into an unknown future?
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

2. If you answered nobody, you’re
part of the norm and not the exception. In
fact, organizations everywhere on the planet
mistakenly believe that all the
“answers” are INSIDE
their own building.
What’s the problem
with that thinking?
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

3. answers are NEVER inside the building.
NEVER in your leadership meetings. Never on your strategic
The
planning retreats.
Nope, the answers are always
OUTSIDE
in the marketplace and
community.
The answers are where the people you serve live. Where
your vendors operate. Where your competitors prowl at
night looking for an opportunistic opening in your wall.
Where people in pain need help.
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

4. LOOK OUTSIDE!
As a CEO Leader and strategist
for 25 years, I’ve learned that if the
answers are outside, we should
(must) look OUTSIDE. Forming an
AdviceSquad is an effective way to get that job done.
More than a board of directors, an AdviceSquad is a
cross-sectional representation of the players in an
organization’s stakeholder ecosystem.
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

5. AdviceSquad
An
opens up
your organization to fresh input
that challenges the most cherished
assumptions about where it is now
and where it must go in the future.
The payoff is generating
new information
by getting more eyes and
points of view on the
organization’s Radar screen.
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

6. AdviceSquad
Done properly, an
can provide invaluable third-party
direction on key projects, new
opportunities, challenges looming on the
horizon, crisis prevention, and crisis
response.
Over time, the AdviceSquad will help an organization
become adept at spotting the critical issues that will
determine success or failure in the future.
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

7. FRAME YOUR
FUTURE…
I’ve had much success with this model
by developing a focused theme for the
AdviceSquad—like technology,
or costs, or competition--and then
letting the group loose to help
“frame the future.”
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

8. The best success story for me came when
my organization faced a revolutionary
change
in global trade policy that would
affect every part of our business.
AdviceSquad
I assembled an
of
experts in the vortex of that issue and debate.
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

9. We had economists, government representatives,
academicians, consultants and others meet to drill
deeply into every part of the issue.
The result was a catalytic spark. That produced a
strategic response that not only prevented a negative
hit, it led to incremental revenue and stability.
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com

10. The Author
CEO Change Leader Strategist Issues & Crisis Manager
As CEO of YellowChair Strategy, he helps leaders transform
their organization to “survive today and thrive tomorrow.”
Mark Affleck
Posted November 2013
MARK AFFLECK
http://www.yellowchairstrategy.com