Perhaps we need to kill strategy and do this instead

A privilege of my position (albeit a slightly dubious one), is that I get to see a lot of strategies.   People often send them to me or describe them to me, and so I’m able to form a pretty decent idea of the “strategy zeitgeist” out there. Are they good? Are they bad? What […]

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 not super domain specific.  It’s basically about understanding how things (e.g. businesses) fit into wider systems (e.g. markets) in a healthy and harmonious way that benefits all parties. (Granted there […]

Four useful ways to think about “insight”

Is “strategy” the shittest word in business? No!  Although it is indeed misunderstood, and although it’s used to cloak all manner or useless jargony guff, it can only be considered prince of the bullshit realm. The king?  There can be no question: Insight. Yes, in comparison to this slippery bugger “strategy” seems solid as a […]

What your advertising tells you about your strategy

Generally I’m very careful not to talk about advertising.  It’s dangerous – for me especially. On a business level, I have to make sure that people don’t confuse my product with pure “ad strategy” or “branding strategy”.  Many broader strategy discussions devolve to this, for the simple reason that this is where most conscious “strategy […]

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 know that ideas (and strategies) are worth nothing, and execution is everything.  This is obvious, or should be anyway. But the notion above? This is more subtle, and I think […]

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 least, something they vaguely label as “strategy”.  But that’s not where strategy lives, in your head.  Instead it lives “out there”.  In the fabric of the business, the minds of […]

Here’s why these debates about the definition of “strategy” are so dumb

The other day, I did a post about how pointless it is to argue about definitions of terms like “strategy”, and how it’s better instead to just say what you mean. I think you can guess what happened next. The comments section, naturally, became furious debating shop over the definitions of such terms.  So I […]

My 5 contrarian beliefs on strategy

If I could select one single idea from my body of work which I think is the most powerful and transformative it would be this: The importance of disagreeing with your competitors. If you’ve been following my stuff for a while you’ll know all about this.  The point is that it’s not enough to simply […]

7 sticky statements for effortless strategic thinking

To be frank with you, I don’t really say anything new in these “news”letters. New to you possibly, but not new to the world at large.  Now this isn’t because I’m uniquely unoriginal, but rather because when it comes to strategy, there isn’t anything new to be said.  Not by me, not by anyone. It […]

How to use woo-woo magic to get a strategic edge

Look, I happen to think that “woo-woo” works. By which I mean tapping into esoteric, mystical, even spiritual forces for the purpose of developing strategy. I know it sounds crazy, and you don’t have to agree, but in fairness I’m in pretty good company. Steve Jobs had everyone at his funeral issued with Paramahansa Yogananda’s […]