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. Now I’m not going to tell you to stop making such excuses, and to start taking responsibility for yourself (even though you should). No, for the purposes of this piece […]

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 us, is the willingness to take massive action. Like everything, this applies to both the personal and professional. The main thing that stops people achieving something – whether its getting […]

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 to do strategy, so why would I even bring it up? It sounds like asking if you need to be Spanish to drive a train, or short to peel an […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 short I favour public meetings (cafe, bar, etc.) over private My typical client engagement is generally something like a 2.5 hour chit chat in a buzzy coffee shop or members’ […]

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 point still stands – the discipline, and indeed business in general, is polluted by a style of communication that actually obscures meaning rather than revealing it. I think we massively […]

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 […]

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 […]