Graphs to Summarize the Enterprise

In the past 24 hours I've come across two articles about the life cycle of a business. What I caught was the graphs they used to summarize pages of text. I will use both in my workshops but for different reasons.

The first article summarized my two semester strategy course in graduate school . It correlated the stage your company is in to the role of the CEO. This was a great table I will use in workshops to help business owners clarify their primary role.

The second article started from the vision of a company as a pie divided into pieces: sales, finance, marketing, product development, operations. In addition the pie is divided into 3 rings. The inner core is the original concept of the business. The middle ring is your inner circle of strategy in each pie area. The outer circle - the piece everyone else sees - is the tactical execution part of the business. This one was cool because it took my current 2 dimensional visual tool of a pie and added another dimension.

Both of these tools are great if you go beyond the concept and apply them directly to your own business. That's where the Breakthrough Business School comes in. Because as the Japanese proverb says: "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."