How to grow a strategic culture

What do you look for in a new hire? Immediately no doubt all the cliches come to mind.  Hardworking, team player, problem solver, etc.  Cliches are quite helpful like that: by on the tip of our tongue, they guide us effortlessly to good solid solutions.  Solutions that have been tried and tested enough to become […]

How to make eco-strategies work

I spend a lot of time here talking against herd behaviour; against the reflexive urge, we all have to copy and to cluster – particularly in business. It should be acknowledged, however, that not all herd behaviour is necessarily illogical or counterproductive.  We are all swimming in the same cultural waters, and sometimes a wave […]

Sugar, sex, and the supernormal

Following my piece a few months back on the phenomenon of concentration – the great invisible force shaping pretty much everything right now – I wanted to do another similar piece on a different macro-trend. The purpose of such pieces, which of course aren’t strategy how-to guides like some others, is to give you a […]

The danger of knowing too much

Consider the following paradox: The more news you consume, the more ignorant you may become. How can this be true?  After all, clearly the person who reads the paper regularly, watches a 24 hour news channel, devours current affairs podcasts, and spends hours on Twitter will end up knowing an awful lot of stuff.  Certainly […]

Strategy can never be “scientific”

When you’re facing a task that doesn’t have a solution that you know will work at the outset. There is no “strategy” to fixing a muffler, or flying a jet, or tying pigtails; there is just a method. Strategy is reserved for the many walks of life where there are no neat and tidy solutions […]