Leadership - Basic Arts

The two most powerful words in business – use them constantly

Your language determines your thoughts. Your thoughts determine your actions. Your actions determine your results. So I guess in a sense those postmodernists were right

The Casino Technique: why some people always seem to win, and others struggle

Do you believe that success comes down to luck? Whether it’s for your business or yourself, do you think that although your own actions are

Forget failure, here’s how to learn from success

Most of us are pretty good at blaming outside factors for our failures. The economy sucked My business partner screwed me Our team stinks Etc.

Here’s why you struggle to make big moves

I think most of us here probably understand this simple idea: The main difference between the people who achieve extraordinary things, and the rest of

Do you have to be an a*hole to be good at strategy?

This is quite a strange question. It’s strange because very few people are asking it. Nobody really assumes that you need to be an asshole

How to do strategy for your own career

You’ll only really understand strategy when you understand this: It’s a universal pattern It’s not a piece of technical knowledge, it’s not something invented, it’s

Three reasons great strategists think more about style than substance

“The world doesn’t reward the people with the best ideas. It rewards the people who are best at communicating ideas.” – David Perrell We all

Three indisputable signs you have no strategy

The last person who should be the judge of whether you have a strategy is you. Everyone has a strategy in their head. Or at

What is “insight speed” and how do you get there?

In my consulting work with clients, I have two practices which I’ve come to realise are very unusual: I favour long meetings (2+ hours) over

How to write and talk in a strategically powerful way

Pretty much every “strategy” I see looks something like this: Whether or not the example in this image is “trying” to be a strategy, the

The spiritual war between management and strategy

A running theme of this newsletter, and the “strategy industry” in general, is the continued inability for individuals and organisations to “get it”. Why is

The (in)ability that leads to strategic breakthroughs

Let’s be honest: not everyone has the same aptitude for this stuff. Although my focus here is to make big bold strategy democratic, and accessible