The word “strategy” has come to mean anything in an organization that is important. But great strategies drive real purpose and decision-making. Define one that is meaningful, and you can guide real-time choice-making across your… Read more »
Seeing Around Corners
You asked, We Answered: Questions on Ecosystems with Dartmouth’s Ron Adner
Drop in on the chat portion of last week’s Friday Fireside Chat with Dartmouth Professor Ron Adner, in which we discuss the concepts from his new book, “Winning the Right Game: How to Disrupt, Defend and… Read more »
Somebody always knew: A conversation between Amy Edmondson and Rita McGrath, top-ranked global thinkers
The topic of psychological safety has taken the world by storm as we realize that in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, there is a huge premium on fast learning. With the recent… Read more »
Can Agile Make Wherever You Work a Better Place?
The Great Resignation continues to gather steam as people in their millions re-evaluate their relationship with work. But not everyone has the luxury or the bandwidth to quit, at least not right now. And there is no guarantee… Read more »
The latest for the Flops File – Zillow Offers
It takes a special combination of ingredients to land in my “flops” file. You have to lose your parent company at least $50 million. You probably started out with big ambitious goals, all-at-once funding, leaders… Read more »
10 Questions to Ask Before You Believe in a Business Model
Some business models are inherently more attractive than others, yet investors and other stakeholders often don’t ask the obvious questions. Here’s a checklist that makes sure you are not one of them. People like to make… Read more »
Can you hear me now? A “Seeing Around Corners” early warning materializes
When a sector has hostages, not customers, big problems go un-addressed, people are desperate for help and don’t get it, and a near-monopoly provider community fails to listen, the stage is set for a major… Read more »
How a Growth Gap can Sneak Up On You
This article was co-developed with Alex van Putten, Partner at Cameron and Associates, and draws from our 2017 article “How to Set More Realistic Growth Targets.” It’s always easy to project rosy growth goals that… Read more »
The Discipline that Turns Vision into Reality
In the heady days of coming up with what you think is a breakthrough idea, it’s easy to get carried away by assumptions. Forcing yourself to create a deliverables specification can create powerful discipline. Entrepreneurs… Read more »
We need to talk about five mechanisms to avoid future catastrophe.
Humans are surprisingly adaptive creatures – many of the changes wrought by the pandemic would have been unthinkable in an earlier era. And yet, we’re also remarkably blind to changes happening right under our noses. … Read more »
Snow Melts from the Edges – Some Lessons from Buffer
Big changes seldom announce themselves conveniently at the conference table at headquarters. They bubble up, instead, at the ‘edges’ of the organization, where things are most exposed. This short story from Buffer illustrates. In Seeing… Read more »