After 8 years since founding Valize, 4 changes of software approaches, more than 50 iterations of my Columbia Executive Education program “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” and 5 books, the software designed to make managing… Read more »
Seeing Around Corners
When you miscalculate the value of brands – a rare cautionary tale from Warren Buffett
Some things in strategy are thought to be eternally valuable. Among them? Big global brands with years of mass-market advertising and great name recognition behind them. But as investors 3G and Warren Buffett have learned,… Read more »
Beyond the doomscrolling – movement building for positive change
Some additional thoughts from the Powershift conference that took place in February in California – guests included artists, business leaders and even some legends (hello, Ed Catmull of Pixar fame)! This post touches on Peter… Read more »
The Drugs Have Won and the Smart Money Knows It (credit to Jake Novak for this great line)
What do you do when your most visible and notable spokesperson basically declares that what you’re doing is ineffective? We’re about to find out how WW (formerly Weight Watchers) navigates. The rise of Weight Watchers… Read more »
An Artist, An Author and an Inventor Go Into a Bar…
Peter Sims, author of the new book “Black Sheep: The Quest to be Human in an Inhuman Time” regularly convenes a group of artists, thought leaders, inventors, and authors to chat about how we might… Read more »
Could you benefit from Belonging to a Peer-to-Peer Network?
The old recipes for making a firm a talent factory have eroded. Executive development programs provided formal training specific to organizational levels, and employees were expected to remain with their organizations for long careers. Today,… Read more »
Why are so few people talking about the massive wealth transfer to women?
Until astonishingly recently in the sweep of human history, women in the United States had little control over their financial assets, and despite the reality that they make fundamental spending decisions, many sectors of our… Read more »
Our lizard lateral brains and the exponential world we’re confronting
Human brains were designed for a world of lateral change. But, as Ray Kurzweil and others remind us, learning-by-trial-and-error systems introduce the potential for exponential change. This has huge implications for how we design and… Read more »
Rewriting the employment contract, courtesy of COVID
As we begin to slowly emerge from the pandemic, some of the contours of what post-pandemic life will be like are starting to come into focus. As employees leave their old roles in droves and… Read more »
A heartwarming customer service story
The state of customer service across most of the economy is dreadful. A recent delightful experience at Patagonia proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. The sad world of customer service As I… Read more »
Rebuilding Ukraine: Huge opportunity, huge risks?
I’ve been asked to offer a public lecture for Ukraine by the DTEK Academy, the learning and development arm of one of the country’s leading energy providers. As we bring 2022 to a close, I… Read more »
Early warnings of a fading competitive advantage
As the world begins to open up and I’m back on the speaking circuit, a question I get asked again and again is how one can tell when a once-robust competitive advantage is starting to… Read more »