6 days ago4. Know your usersThe “most underrated skill in management is … clearly articulating the problem you seek to solve before jumping into action.”* However, many managers choose ‘solutions’ first and then look for the problems this will fix: “We’re launching a cultural/digital/agile transformation” they announce “to address our talent/technology/innovation gap”. Managers do this…4 min read4 min read
Sep 143. Understand what is being consideredMost people have heard of the ‘butterfly effect’ — a butterfly flaps its wings in Rio de Janeiro and a tornado hits Chicago as small changes can have large effects elsewhere. This is the popular version. …4 min read4 min read
Sep 122. Challenge AssumptionsNo matter how often the business media likes to portray some leaders as all-seeing, all-knowing strategic geniuses modern business is too complex for any single leader to be on top of everything. To truly lead their organisations modern leaders must free themselves from the impossible burden of thinking they have…3 min read3 min read
Sep 71. Use a Common LanguageEveryone hates long wasteful meetings, yet we have so many of them. Are meetings poor because people organising them don’t create good enough agendas? Is it because people attending don’t come prepared? Or is it because people tend to go off on tangents and sabotage the meeting? The answer as…2 min read2 min read
Sep 540 Principles for Better OrganisationsMao Zedong was one of the greatest military commanders in history, though he downplayed his own achievements. …2 min read2 min read
Mar 17Dare To Give Up Control!Leaders are judged on delivering success. The traditional playbook has been to make the organisation run like a well-oiled, efficient machine — producing ever-greater outputs with ever-minimal inputs. To make the machine efficient a monster, feeding on an insatiable diet of measurement and control, is unleashed.[1] …Strategy5 min readStrategy5 min read
Mar 13Strategy Playbook for Overcoming Sanctions — the Huawei BanMission In May 2019[1] the United States government designated Huawei — the telecommunications giant — a risk to national security and restricted the Chinese company from doing business in the U.S. What became known as the ‘Huawei Ban’ ban was later extended to restrict anyone, anywhere from selling Huawei anything that…Huawei12 min readHuawei12 min read
Feb 18“People, ideas, technology — In that order!”When, in 2016, AlphaGo — an AI system from DeepMind (a Google-owned company) — beat the world champion of Go (or weiqi, a strategy board game as popular in the East as chess is in the West) it sent shock-waves throughout Asia. This ‘sputnik’ moment triggered a tidal wave of…Technology3 min readTechnology3 min read
Feb 1Strategic Options for Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0Mission In October 2022, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines when he acquired Twitter for $44 billion. Since then, speculation has been rampant about his intentions for the social media platform. In a recent tweet, Musk provided some insight, stating his aim to provide “Trust as a Service” (TaaS):1 We’re going…Twitter10 min readTwitter10 min read
Oct 3, 2022Hierarchy of Strategic ThinkingBusiness people bandy about words like strategy, innovation and culture all the time, but if you ask people to define what these words mean you’ll get very different answers. So when people repeat well-known phrases such as “culture eats strategy for breakfast” what they’re saying is that something (they can’t…Strategy4 min readStrategy4 min read
