How to use goals to provoke an awesome strategy
Historically, I’ve kinda thought that goals for businesses are a waste of time. After all, aren’t the goals always the same? • To grow • To increase profits • To get more customers • Etc. It’s all so obvious it goes without saying, so I’ve preferred to “cut out the middle man” and just jump […]
Want to know MY strategy? Here it is…
You’ve all heard the phrase “the cobbler’s children have no shoes”, and I will admit that for a long time this was kinda the case with me: I had no strategy. Or at least, not a particularly compelling one. Now in my case this didn’t matter hugely because I also had effectively zero competitors. Here […]
What should strategy *feel* like?
DON’T THINK. This is the message that the great sci-fi author Ray Bradbury had taped to his typewriter. He believed that his job, when he sat down to write, wasn’t to have an intellectual experience, but a visceral one. To feel. To live, even. To have the experience of living whilst being sat at the […]
The shocking truth about marketing and strategy
This is a dangerous essay. It’s dangerous for you, because if you only grasp it casually it will take you further away from the truth, rather than closer to it. And it’s dangerous for me, because it risks my work being bracketed into a category which I’ve painstakingly avoided for the past 7 years. The […]
The big misunderstanding about “brand”
Whatever most people believe about a subject, you can be sure that the exact opposite is true. It’s crazy how often this principle turns out to be accurate. I’d almost call it a law of nature. Or “Smith’s Law” perhaps. On any subject of understanding (as opposed to hard fact), people have an incredible ability […]
The magic of Schwarzenegger Goals
What is the point of a goal? Sounds weird doesn’t it. Like a non-sensical question. When we set a goal, surely the goal itself is the point, right? It’s the thing we want. The thing we’re striving for. The destination. The end. A goal – we assume – doesn’t have any greater purpose than that. […]
The Cringe Test
One of my favourite things is to come up with new ways of explaining old concepts. They say there’s nothing new under the sun, and I think that’s true – but there are new ways of expressing things, and they can be just as valuable. After all, every new expression of an old idea makes […]
How working from home kills strategy
What exactly is wrong with working from home? From what I’ve been able to gather, many organisations are starting to ask this question. It’s not a straight forward one, because the nature of the benefits and drawbacks aren’t symmetrical. The benefits are very direct and obvious. Anyone can see them, and one hardly need make […]
Are we using AI backwards?
Before we begin, a word of warning: I know very little about AI. Because of this, some of my explanations below may be a bit off-base. Certainly don’t take my word on anything technical – and if you think I’ve got something wrong, feel free to email me back explaining how ignorant I am. However, […]
Going deep on strategy with the Hungry podcast
An exciting change of pace this week, where I’ll give you a break from the essays and point you instead to my recent appearance on the great podcast, Hungry. Hungry is a podcast for challenger food and drink brands which has featured the founders of many breakthrough brands, top thinkers such as Rory Sutherland, and […]