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 it so hard? What is the blocker that makes a fundamental business discipline (perhaps THE fundamental discipline), so bloody difficult to grasp?  Why does nobody know what it is?  Why […]

Should you actually listen to your customers?

Barely a day goes by without somebody sagely remarking to me just how important it is to “listen to your customers”. Generally they do it because they think I’ll agree.  It’s not really advice so much as it is an act of solidarity.  The message is that we’re in the customer-centric club, and that we […]

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 to everyone, there’s always going to come a moment when know-how breaks down, and personal ability takes over. That stuff can be trained partially, but not totally.  Ultimately some people […]

This is the best way to learn strategy, but most ignore it

If you want to learn a skill like strategy, there are lots of resources to help you do it: Books Courses Videos Newsletters Frameworks Podcasts Etc. These are all great, and I’d recommend anything you can get your hands on (especially if they’re by me *cough*). But there’s one problem with all that stuff. It’s […]

Here’s a brainless shortcut that actually works

In a way the core principle of strategy is that there are no shortcuts. There are no obvious, off-the-peg, brainless things you can just “do” to get competitive advantage.  Everything requires some degree of thought, insight, and risk. But you know, that may not be strictly true. Because I do believe there is one pretty […]

The 3 step process I use on every project

People often say that strategy is both “art and science”. I do agree, but I think there’s a better way of putting it: Strategy is intuition and analysis. Both are crucial, because each does a job the other can’t. Intuition allows you to take a holistic view of the situation, and generate truly original and […]

The Cybertruck is another strategic masterclass from Tesla

Sorry.  Here I am writing about Tesla again. I don’t even like Tesla!  But damn they just make for the cleanest strategic case studies, so I can’t help it. Elon Musk’s “secret masterplan” that got the company off the ground in the first place (and pretty much invented the electric car category) is basically the […]

I’ve finally figured out why most strategies are so bad

This idea comes from a Linkedin post I did which seemed to strike a nerve, so I thought I’d expand on it here. What are the ingredients of a great strategy? Data? Insight? Creativity? Skill? Leadership? Knowledge? Clarity? For sure, all that stuff is required.  But there’s one other thing which is just as crucial […]

The ONE word missing from almost every strategy I see

As you can imagine, I get a lot of people sending me strategies for feedback. And thanks to the fact that most of them have followed the steps in my book, they tend to be pretty good.  Definitely not the monstrosities that you normally see under the label of “strategy”. But there is one problem […]

How to 10x your strategy with one conversation

When you’re developing a strategy for your business, you know who the most helpful person is? It’s not your co-founder. It’s not your head of strategy. It’s not your head of marketing. It’s not your consultant. It’s not even your customer. No, the most helpful person – who nobody ever bothers to involve in the […]