4 rules to make you a successful dissenter
Too often dissent is seen as just negative. Sometimes it is, particularly when the dissent is from a course of action that demands change, but even that can be useful. The nature of dissent, when removed from becoming personalised, is usually hugely positive,...
When is a price ‘guesstimate’ good enough?
Many small businesses operate a job-shop business model for some or all of their revenue. They do not produce products, then sell from inventory, they sell a product as specified by the buyer, which in the detail will be unique. However, from a higher perspective,...
Will the Facebook Metamorphous just deliver another uglier duck?
I cannot let the name change of 'Facebook', to 'Meta', go uncommented. They are not the first to undergo a name change, for a range of reasons. Mostly they are to escape bad publicity, sometimes because it made some strategic sense to do so given the nature of...
Is your Pricing architecture treated separately to your tactical pricing?
Your pricing architecture should be driven by your business model. Your tactical pricing decisions should be driven by the immediate competitive and market pressures. They are different, and while not mutually exclusive, are, or should be, largely separate....
Q: What do you think is the biggest source of Innovation? A: ….
A gem of insight from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella happened in the last minute of this interview by HBR editor Adi Ignatius: 'What do you think is the biggest source of innovation and why? Is it diversity, technical skill, humanity, employee equity, something else'?...
Does the Shewhart cycle still do the job?
Every improvement project at some point refers to the Shewhart cycle: Plan, Do, Check, Act. I have used it extensively myself, but never been fully comfortable with the language of the last two points in the cycle, and the actions that the language implies. Plan, Do,...
Is ‘Go to Market’ a redundant strategy?
There are a number of common phrases used in marketing that should be redundant. ‘Go to market’ is often used before words like ‘strategy,’ ‘Plan’ and ‘Process.’ ‘Product/market fit’ is increasingly used in the context of digital products, as in 'seeking...
Ditch the siren song of the vision cliché
Having a vision, mission, purpose, all of them has become top of the consultant pile of 'must do's' for success. What a misleading crock of old cobblers! A vision in the absence of the resources, capabilities, and determination to get down in the weeds...
Should Marketing expenditure be capitalised?
Effective managers are sensitive to the differences between working capital and investment capital. The former is the money it takes to keep the business running, to generate the transactions, fill the gap between the sales registered in the P&L, and the cash...
The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ of price.
In competitive markets, price is a bit like a game, typified by the 'prisoners dilemma' of game theory, where two players acting in their own self-interest will result in a suboptimal outcome for both. In the classic scenario, you have two people, suspects of a...