“We don’t know” is unacceptable in some occupations. If you were to pop your head into the pilot’s cabin before take-off on your next flight and ask, “do you know how to fly this thing?” you’re not expecting to hear “we don’t

A senior executive recently suggested to me that the disciplines of “strategy” and “marketing” should be merged. There’s no need any longer for them to be separate, he proposed. I took note. This was, after all, a senior manager of a major

We’ve seen whole industries devastated in the wake of Covid-19. Many businesses, looking for ways to stay alive, have considered diversification. But all too often they flinch because a message has been drilled into them: Don’t diversify. “Stick to your knitting!”, the

Strategy execution has always been tricky. Volumes have been written over decades about how to do it. An equal quantity of material has been generated on why strategy execution is so poor. One recent report, for example, adds to the string of

We live in an age of great innovation spurred by amazing advances in information technology, the internet, and social media. These changes are inspiring a constant stream of new business ideas. However, many of these will be snuffed out in their prime.

I’m pretty sure you’ve had this experience. You’re in a strategic planning session for your organisation and you get to the point where someone suggests “we need to write down our objectives.” Some game individual then stands up and walks to a

Not so long ago, organisation design was a primary concern of CEOs seen as a fundamental driver of effectiveness and efficiency. It seems to have dropped off the agenda of late being replaced by many of today’s issues such as gender mix

Analysing “the competition” is a tried and tested method for developing strategy. But what do you do when the discussion turns bland and unfocused? Here’s a trick to sharpen your strategic team’s competitive instincts. Use rivalry. It will get them producing more

Louise, a senior partner at a large national law firm, I’ll call it Robinson & Rose, pulled me to one side at a break in my seminar on business strategy. “I get what you’re saying” she said “but my firm is so

It’s a truism to say if you don’t ask the right question, you won’t get the correct answer. This is true in developing business strategy. The problem executives have in organizations is that invariably they are asking the wrong two questions. As