How I grew my business
When I did the AMA a couple of weeks ago, I was hoping a couple of questions would come through which would make for good posts. Some people asked me how I manage to keep churning these things out week after week, and as I told them, dredging up inspiration from sources like this is […]
Remapping the world: the rise of horizontal loyalty
It’s time for another macro-trend piece. As long time readers will know by now, these are my crude attempts to sketch some of the more subtle forces shaping the world around us. As strategy is all about adaptation to context, it follows that we must understand our context to think strategically – and that’s what […]
Cultural imprinting: how ads really work?
Ever notice how much better it is when your favourite song comes on the radio compared to when you listen to it on Spotify? It’s weird isn’t it. You’re driving along, radio humming away as background noise, and then you hear those first couple of beats and suddenly it’s volume up, windows down, hand beating […]
There are two types of strategy – which do you need?
Ostensibly, a business strategy is about growth. Figure out a direction, execute on it, sell more stuff. Simple as that. However, whilst this is broadly true, the process by which you find a strategy can be quite different depending on your stage of development. Indeed the way one business goes about it can be the complete opposite […]
How not to be disrupted
Note: after last week’s discussion and the idea of balancing planned vs. agile strategies, I gave it some more thought and came up with a concept I think explains it well. So you can consider this a bit of a follow up, hope you enjoy. ____ Generally speaking, I think the pace of change is wildly exaggerated. […]
Agile vs. planned – and why wrong is sometimes better than right
In the wonkish strategy world, there is a debate between two schools: agile and planned. So far as I can tell planned strategies are those which involve setting out a particular position against the competition and sticking to it, whilst agile strategies are naturally more open to regular change, depending on circumstances and opportunities. Who […]
The Challenger Trap: fighting the status quo with the status quo
Once up on a time, to be a “challenger brand” simply meant that you weren’t number one. On this basis pretty much any brand could be framed as such, without it really saying anything about their philosophy or approach to the market. One of the original challenger brands, for example, was Avis, the car rental […]
Freddie Ljungberg and the transformative power of context
“For there is nothing either good or bad, but context makes it so”. – Not quite William Shakespeare, but close enough ___ Back in the days before they moved to the Emirates stadium and became mid-table dreck, Arsenal had a player called Freddie Ljungberg. Ljungberg has always held a particular fascination for me and my […]
Jobs, dating, and treating yourself as a commodity
We’ve all heard of the concept of managing your “personal brand”, right? Typically this doesn’t really mean anything more complex than managing your reputation, but even so people tend to find it a bit “icky”, since it mixes the impersonal language of business with the far deeper subtleties of ourselves as human beings. Certainly I […]
The strategic difference that really counts
Difference, as we know, is at the heart of strategy. In any realm – business, politics, military, personal – it is about walking a different path to the others around you. Indeed we might say that’s its very definition: Strategy is that which only you do. Naturally, you will be the same as others in […]