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 […]

Literally everything I know about business in 3 bullet points

OK, I have a confession to make: I don’t really know what the word “marketing” means. I don’t know what the word “proposition” means. I don’t know what the word “positioning” means. I don’t really know precisely what any technical business word means, even “strategy” (or at least what other people mean when they say […]

You aren’t really trying to grow, and I can prove it

It’s hard growing your business. It’s hard coming up with creative ideas. It’s hard to get a breakthrough. It’s hard to really make things change …or at least, that’s what we tell ourselves. But what if it wasn’t true? What if all this stuff was actually pretty easy? What if the real reason it feels […]

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 understand strategy at the deepest – even cosmic – level

Warning: this one gets a bit “deep”… but you might still get a kick out of it, let’s see. As many of you know, I never had any formal strategy training. Heck, until fairly recently, I’d never even read a book about it. In fact I think I had the misguided arrogance to set up […]

How do you know when your strategy is “good enough”?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: You don’t actually need your strategy to be particularly good. Yes, we’d all love to achieve the elegant brilliance of a Southwest, or an IKEA, but being real that’s probably not gonna happen. There’s a reason why people talk about those same case studies over […]

Strategy as a cure for modern malaise

OK, this title sounds ridiculous. But hear me out, and by the end of this essay, I think I’ll have won you over. First, here’s the issue: The modern world is boring. Now admittedly it’s many other things too. And many of those things might make you happy to be living in the here and […]

The No Bullshit Strategy Manifesto

As with so many things, the issue with strategy is not so much the information out there – it’s the presentation. There is no grand discovery to be made; no revolutionary process or framework; no groundbreaking new way to think about the discipline. Strategy is strategy. And everything there is to know about it is […]

Three ways to know if you’re lying to yourself in your strategy

I’ve often felt that you can boil strategy down to an attempt to simply be as honest as possible. About your business. About yourself. About the world. The closer you get to absolute truth, the more effective your actions.  With God-like omniscience anything can be done.  You of course know a lot less – but […]

But seriously, does strategy even matter?

One of my concepts that long time readers will be familiar with is this: Strategy is optional. It really is.  You don’t have to do it.  Most successful people and businesses don’t even bother – at least not consciously.  They just hustle and experiment and try, and get their rewards regardless.  Generally we can say […]