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...
When price becomes almost irrelevant.
Price is just an arbitrary scale for the 'unquantifiables' which has only two functions: it is a reflection of the amount someone is prepared to sell something for. It is a relative measure, helping you to make purchase choices by giving you and the seller...
Keep looking for the ‘Big Idea’
Following on from my rant about content porn, it seems to me that the real problem has become the immediacy required by the digital age. You need more stuff, on line, now! At least, that is the demand, but more stuff is of no value unless it moves...
6 confronting questions for every initiative to ensure success.
Long term survival of every commercial enterprise is dependent on one thing, and one thing only: Consistently being able to make a profit sufficient to ensure that the owners are prepared to continue to have their capital in the business rather than...
Future retail success will come from ‘Organic Intelligence’
There is some really interesting and contradictory stuff going on in retail. On line shopping is continuing to expand at breakneck speed, so we are told. According to Statista.com the current percentage in Australia is 7.2%, but the percentage...
What is your businesses key metric?
Every business has a key strategic metric, one that encapsulates the productivity of the investments made in the business, that can be tracked over time, and broken down progressively as you move into the operational levels of your business. The metric you...