Driving business success isn’t as simple as knowing your customer anymore. As the Ancient Greeks told us, you’ve also got to “Know Thyself.” If you want to develop a business strategy that outperforms the competition, that means getting laser-focused on the things that you do better than anyone else and bolstering any gaps in your business arsenal.

The term “competitive market analysis” may sound like something reserved for the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies, but it can be incredibly valuable to any business. Because no matter what industry you’re in, you’ll always deal with competition. To stand out, you must identify what your competitors are doing and compare your current practices against theirs. This is exactly what a competitive market analysis is most often used for.

If you’re running or facilitating a strategic planning meeting, there are many factors to consider. It’s much more than just bringing everyone together to have an open discussion — and it doesn’t just happen on its own, either. There are several steps you can take to ensure that your strategic planning meeting runs smoothly, but it all starts with preparation. Today, we’ll explore a few ideas to help you hold a successful session, starting with the basics.

For growing SaaS companies, having the right tools in place that allow the business to scale is critical. No one knows this better than Kelvin Ong, Strategy and Organizations Specialist at Typeform. Typeform is a global SaaS company that sets the gold standard in online interactions for forms, quizzes, surveys, and more, and has been growing swiftly to meet rising customer demand. In fact, Typeform doubled its headcount over the last year.

Suppose you work for an organization or corporation. At least once in your professional life, you might experience a lack of leadership or direction (unless you’re very lucky). The problem with a lack of guidance is that when we can’t see the big picture or understand the value of our work, we feel demotivated, frustrated, and eventually leave.

How do ideas turn into actions? We often believe when people have brilliant ideas, it is as if a lightning bolt struck them somehow. This romanticized image of innovation couldn’t be farther from the truth. The reality is that innovative ideas come from collaboration, a key factor to manage any project successfully. Think about how Steve Jobs started Apple, now one of the biggest tech companies globally, with Steve Wozniak as a partner. Or, moving away from tech, how two scientists, Dr.

While hybrid and remote work have opened up some exciting opportunities for teams, these models also may introduce the potential for silos, security challenges, and communication issues. Optimizing your hybrid tech stack is a huge piece of the puzzle. We all remember the early stages of the remote working era when companies were layering on tool after tool, struggling to find something that worked for our teams.

Good eye contact, a firm handshake, and positive in-person experiences used to go a long way in building customer trust. So what are consultants to do in this new era where remote meetings are the norm and opportunities to build trust are not as obvious?

October is our favorite month for many reasons — but the main reason is because it’s when we host Distributed, our annual virtual conference. This year, we explored how teams can deeply connect with one another, their work, and their sense of purpose — and got to learn about digital design sprints from Jake Knapp, how Deloitte powers innovation from the inside out, or how to spark team creativity with Columbia University’s Lance Weiler.

Now that many businesses have made the leap to remote and hybrid work, some teams are struggling to sustain connection and creative momentum. Teammates can feel isolated, and silos can form across workstreams, hampering your team’s ability to collaborate. It can be difficult to build efficient workflows that support virtual and hybrid projects. But with these challenges comes a great opportunity for team leaders to reimagine the workplace. And that’s exactly what they’re doing!