The ‘Collaboration trap’
Collaboration has become a standard mantra, 'do it or die'. I see all sorts of collaboration being put in place, most of it leads to wasted time, energy, lost opportunity, and suboptimal outcomes. Why The collaboration teams are thrown together from...
Anatomy of a successful sales letter.
My inbox is stuffed with sales letters, an outcome of 20 years of researching and engaging in a wide range of areas of interest to me, and those I work with, in an effort to distil the lessons to be passed on. Some are very good, they move the hand towards...
What is the single source of competitive advantage in the 21st century?
Competitive advantage used to be about the sum of scale and the efficiencies that could be applied. Businesses like GM, GE, Exon Mobil, Wal-Mart all built scale and efficiency as the core of their success. Our economies and institutions ran on the basis of...
Which 5 capabilities enable a leader to successfully scale
Virtually every business I come across wants to grow. A few I come across want to, and are able to scale. Scaling is different from just growing, it requires much more than being better at what you currently do. It requires significant change, invites...
Is AI going to take our jobs?
Some of them yes. Those repetitive jobs where we do the same thing over and over, will be gone. Let's be clear about AI. It is artificial, it is not intelligent. AI is very good at some things we humans are bad at, but it is no good at what made we humans so...
The most common cause of the failure of medium sized businesses.
Businesses fail for a lot of reasons, lack of cash, their product becomes redundant, competitors emerge at a cheaper price, distribution is not as anticipated, inadequate sales skills, and many others. However, all these failures have a common root. They...
A retrospective on personal values.
Years ago as a young product manager, I made two related mistakes. Nothing huge, or threatening, just a stupid mistake that would have been avoided by a bit of due diligence, thought, and experience. All three were missing, but what was there was the...
The single reason most strategy planning fails
We confuse strategic thinking with the execution of an agreed strategy. They are two entirely different processes, and should not be just lumped together for convenience, which is what most of us do by default. Thinking the strategy does nothing to execute...
Are you running a zombie business
Zombies are the fictional 'living dead'. A zombie business model is one that might still be alive, but may as well be dead, unless there is radical surgery undertaken. Blockbuster was a zombie model, happily making money while Netflix emerged from...
How to swim in the profit pool
Every industry is an amalgam of value chains, demographic, behavioural, and geographic segments of customers and suppliers. Inevitably, some of these segments are more profitable than others for a range of reasons. Therefore it makes sense to...