The Toilet Paper Rule
We want to be the Apple of dishwasher tablets. We want to be the Nike of accountancy software. We want to be the Tesla of bathroom grout. We want to be the Supreme of clingfilm. We want to be the Netflix of medical waste disposal. Recognise statements like these? We all want to be the […]
The Most Underrated Strategic Tool
We are all cats in boxes. This is an analogy I once heard (can’t remember where) which really speaks to me, and has a lot of importance for smart and strategic thinking. Expanded, the concept is something like this. Imagine you have a cat in a box, with air holes punched in it so it […]
Go big or go home – why the mass market still matters
Apologies in advance to foreign readers for the very British cultural references that follow – no doubt you’ll be able to sub in your own equivalents and still get the gist. ___ When I was growing up, I vividly remember our family’s Saturday night viewing routine: Blind Date, Gladiators, and Birds of a Feather. An unbeatable triple combo of […]
The Strategic Hierarchy – Business Made Easy
As we all know, strategy is confusing. If I tell people that I’m a strategist, they typically respond in a similar manner as if I told them I’m a pixie – a mixture of bafflement and scepticism. “I don’t really know what you mean, but it sounds like bullshit anyway”. This, frankly, is fair enough. […]
The cautionary tale of Only Fans, and why it matters to your business
A couple of months back I wrote a piece about the trend of concentration – whereby technology is enabling attention and money to be pooled into fewer people and organisations. That piece was extremely broad in scope and considered the issue at a societal level, so here I want to take it down a knot […]
Great Brands Are Clueless Too
When I speak to businesses with a view to working with them, I tend to encounter two different attitudes. Very occasionally, the attitude is one of supreme confidence. We’re great, we’ve got it all figured out, everything’s perfect. This situation always begs the question of why exactly they’re speaking to me, but that’s by the […]
Sussex Royal, Ad Agencies, And The Danger Of Subjective Language
A friend of mine runs a film company, and as a result often works with advertising agencies. He once made a comment based on his experience which has always stuck with me: “Any time I see an agency refer to themselves as ‘creative’, I immediately know they aren’t”. I know I have many newsletter subscribers […]
How To Take Your Thinking To A New Level – Literally
The yin-yang symbol has become a bit of a cliche. These days it’s probably more likely to bring to mind a lower back tattoo than timeless wisdom, which is too bad, because its message is extremely relevant to our contemporary struggles. It also reveals a method of thinking which is central to strategic wisdom, and […]
Glossary Of Strategic Ideas – Volume 1
One question I’m asked, again and again, is what I think of Simon Sinek’s famous “why”. If you don’t know what this is, then I’m very surprised that you’re reading this blog. However, to offer a totally redundant recap, his basic thesis was that “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do […]
How To Use Writing To Solve Problems
I have written before that if you want to have a successful newsletter, you’d better be happy with firing off 500 mails to absolutely nobody – because in order to get there, that’s exactly where you’ll have to start. Fortunately, things haven’t been quite that bad in my case; I’m a long way from 500 […]