My plan after business school was to better understand how companies create, implement, and learn from strategic initiatives. I moved to New York and joined what was then called Andersen Consulting Strategic Services in 1998. One of my early mentors coached me to be very mindful of how the strategies we recommend had immediate impacts on people, process, and product solutions that may need to be implemented. A simple illustration on a cocktail napkin below served as a discussion framework after a long, first day with the client.

I find myself talking through the above with people today regarding their enterprise mobility strategy. I am a fan of the following definition: a strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty and limited resources.

A customer in the packaging and supply chain business recently provided a great example of the cocktail napkin illustration from many years ago:

My strategy and goal is to modernize the way our sales team presents and closes business with our customers…from laptops, paper and reconnecting only when in the office to interactive iPad presentations and approvals wirelessly sent from the customer site…by delivering our secured apps and documents through our existing network drives, SharePoint and VPN infrastructure…without the need to introduce new data center installs or redundant content management systems that require new people training, testing, and maintenance.

His enterprise mobility strategy had tied in people, process, and product considerations in a way that mitigates the risks associated with times of uncertainty and limited resources. Well played! Even though we have all kinds of new technology today, I remind myself of that cocktail napkin conversation over beers in 1998.