Here’s how to get your organisation to commit to strategy

If any of you have read my free little ebook Make Companies Without Competitors, or seen my “Love your competitors” talk, you’ll know that central to my philosophy is the idea of non-competition. Contrary to the common metaphor of the market being “battle ground” or “playing field”, where there is implicitly an enemy to be […]

What I learned being fired twice

This is a slightly tricky essay to write.  Not for the obvious reason that it brings up potentially embarrassing episodes from my past, but actually for the opposite reason: that these days it’s hard to write about “being fired” without it sounding like you’re bragging. It’s a weird thing, but as we have discussed before, in this perma-revolutionary […]

Don’t do this: The reason good strategies fail

A good strategy is not a guarantee of success, for two reasons. The first, as we’ve discussed before, is the unfortunate fact that a good strategy can still be wrong.  All strategies are, unavoidably, speculative – and therefore even the best of them may not work quite the way you imagined when they get out […]

My brand is doing great – Do i need a strategy?

One of the things about strategy that makes it so slippery (and occasionally hard to sell), is this: You can get away without it. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll be way better off with a strategy than without.  But at the same time it’s not like, say, branding, or IT services, or accountancy, or any […]

Are you living by lies

The other day I got an insightful bit of feedback on one of these essays from a client (hi Alan), and it really got me thinking. He said: “This is consistent with your philosophy that great strategies are revealed as truths in and of themselves, and not created by the whims of the strategist” Now […]

Why successful founders give the worst advice

I’ve written before about the inherent limits of expertise, and how it is at that boundary that strategy takes over. What I’ve not written about however is the limits of strategy. The reason for that is pretty obvious of course, it’s hardly in my best interests.  I’m here to sell you on strategic thinking, and the […]

Can a person have a strategy like a business?

One of my favourite concepts is the difference between expertise and strategic ability: Expertise = knowing things Strategic ability = knowing how things interact You can be extremely knowledgable and yet useless strategically because you can’t grasp the dynamics that lie between the things you know; and conversely you can be totally ignorant and yet strategically insightful, […]

The danger of boring yourself

The thing about churning out one of these essays every week, is that it forces me to constantly be focusing on the “next” thing: the next idea, the next theory, the next technique, the next talking point. In general this is no bad thing, as it helps me to continuously deepen my knowledge, and hopefully […]

What my strategy documents look like

One question new clients tend to ask when we begin working together, is “what do I get at the end of this?”. Naturally, they get a strategy – and all the ensuing clarity, growth, fame and fortune that goes with it.  But that’s not really what they mean.  What they mean is what actual “thing” […]

Is there such thing as a strategic personality?

My party trick is to guess people’s star signs. This is a bit weird, not just because it’s odd on the face of it, but moreover because I don’t really know anything about astrology, and nor do I put much stock into horoscopes.  As a matter of fact, I couldn’t even tell you which birthdays […]