Fast Strategy

Boost value with a quick health check.

Amid the talk of strategy, vision, values and goals, there’s one constant that never changes. That’s the mission. What is it? It’s to optimize value for all shareholders over time. Sounds unfashionable, but that’s the reality.

No business can survive if it does not generate positive value. If it’s worthless, it will die. Shareholders won’t prop it up forever. That’s why very few startups survive beyond five years.

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Delegation: the power of someone else

Smart Vs dumb.

I’ve made some great decisions but also plenty that weren’t so great. What’s the difference between them?

Try this. Write down ten decisions, five smart, five dumb. They can be about anything, business, sport, personal. Then look for some common threads. Years ago, I did this on the back of a napkin.

This is what I found.

With smart ones, I knew what I was doing, was good at doing it, and sought help where I knew I needed it. Dumb ones were the opposite. I didn’t really know what I was doing, wasn’t good at it and was so afraid people would discover my lack of expertise I didn’t ask for advice. 

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Why you need to get out more

Great ideas don’t show up at the office. 

“One damn thing after another.” According to a book called Managing by Harvard professor Henry Mintzberg, that defines the average day for most managers. There’s always something to handle.

He’s right. Stuff keeps happening. No one ever came into my office and said, “I just want you to know everything is going great.”

Strategy and leadership play a big role in business theory, but day-to-day action defines the job. To be effective, you can’t confine strategic thinking to the two-day annual offsite. Somehow you have to mix the two.

How can you un-clutter your head and keep open to new ideas?

Once, it might have been done over the long lunch. It wasn’t unusual to resolve issues over port. New initiatives could arise magically out of the cigar smoke.

Times have changed.

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The Ugly Reality Behind Innovation

Your job is to undermine the free market

Odd, isn’t it? Business supports the idea of free competition but spends most of its time trying to undermine it.

That’s the job. Call it creative destruction, innovation or disruption – the principle is still the same. Somehow, you have to find a way of making the playing field uneven.

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Startups and the Art of Surfing

The right wave helps

Startups remind me of surfing. That was my preferred activity after getting my first board on my fourteenth birthday. It was a great individual sport. There were no coaches or surfing schools. You just paddled out and started working on it.

I had reasonable balance but soon learned that wasn’t all it took. When you watch a pro surfer make it look easy, it’s not just their athletic skill that’s on show. What happens before you even get on a wave matters a lot. 

Four things can make a big difference

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