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The "right" share price in the mind of the capital markets is determined by the market view of future earnings. Apart from the obvious issues of a low share price not pleasing shareholders, it clearly also reduces the company's ability to finance acquisitions or invest in other major strategic initiatives.

Creative ideas are the backbone of businesses--be it innovative products, timesaving process improvements, to next growth opportunity.

In today’s fast changing world of business the strategic planning process is one that is repeated at least annually, often more frequently to the point where for many organisations it is now a continuous process. Satisfying future information needs cannot be carried out as a discrete pre-planning activity. Information gathering must be continuous, and therefore future information needs must be identified on a regular basis, and these needs must then be satisfied by the information gatherers. In this way the planners have access to the necessary information as and when they need it.

It is an all-too-familiar scenario. Corporation X misses badly on its commitments several quarters in a row and the stock plummets. As a result, the Board loses confidence, the CEO “resigns,” and a new CEO is appointed who immediately announces a sweeping restructure of the corporation.

As a busy executive, you face some extremely difficult challenges like creating and dominating new markets or finding and keeping the best people. But then, like many executives, do you find yourself spending too much time solving everyday problems (that only you can solve, right?), which prevent you from growing your ideal business?

At one level this is a relatively simple tool, requiring the management to select a key area of business activity and to audit performance in that area, comparing to previous performance levels and, ideally, benchmarking against known best practice and performance levels. The information generated by these audits will then be used to identify unsatisfactory performance and enable measures to be introduced to bring about improvements.

Growth can be achieved through corporate marketing (i.e. organic growth) or M&A (i.e. inorganic growth). The traditional approach to growth focuses on product differentiation and then marketing this differentiation. However, research and experience has shown, the differentiated, superior product doesn't always win the customer.