Managers who provide information to their sales and marketing organizations walk a tight line between drowning in data details and making sure that the information they provide leads to profitable decisions. The daily fire fights do not leave much time for planning ahead, let alone for envisioning the future. Yet, all successful managers know that the future waits for no one – and that it’s better to be prepared than to catch up. Thus they periodically make time to determine which activities need to:
- Stop
- Continue
- Start.
Of course we all know that this traffic light approach to the future sounds more simple than it is to implement. Implementing “stop-continue-start” often requires multiple doses of diplomacy and the stamina and steadfastness of a referee. Over the course of three articles we will take a look at what it takes to get there.