The three perspectives of Strategic thinking you’re probably Ignoring
'Strategic thinking' is that thing most managers claim to do. Often their effort amounts to little more than scheduling next year's budget with a 5% increase across the board. It's like preparing for a cross-country road trip by only checking your rearview...
If you want to drive profit, you need to master price.
Small improvements in average price drive large improvements in profitability. Do the numbers. The normal expectation in consumer markets is that volumes will increase when you promote. Usually they do, but that period is usually followed by a period of...
A blogging introspective to start 2025.
A few days ago I turned 73. Well past any reasonable retirement age, but I cannot see myself as retired. While there is not the same pressure of past years, the thought of playing golf and going to lunch a lot does little for me. In late November last year,...
A marketer’s explanation of AI ‘Tokenisation’
'Tokenisation' is a term bandied about by my AI literate colleagues, commonly at least 40 years my junior. Usually, the term is used in the context of 'it takes X number of tokens to complete this job' or similar. In AI, tokenization is like breaking a sentence or...
Australia’s manufacturing success: winning the race to the bottom.
Around this time two years ago, I questioned the effectiveness and fairness of the initiatives bundled into the 'National Reconstruction Fund.'I am still questioning.With an election looming in early 2025, I expect a predictable flurry of press releases from both...
The ten most unfairly ignored StrategyAudit posts of 2024
This time of year is filled with self-congratulatory posts, the ‘Ten best posts of the year’ types. All of them I see, use as the measure the number of views, shares, and other external measures to rank them. I am going to be different. The posts I put...
New Year’s Day 2025: The 2020s Tipping Point
Have you noticed that today, New Year's Day 2025, marks the halfway point of the 2020s? So what you ask? Fair question. We tend to see halfway points as representing a significant choice, a catalysts for change, the point of no return. Is today such a point?...
Australia’s longest day
Yesterday was the summer solstice here down under. The longest day of the year. While it is a long slide into the modest chills of winter, it has begun, again. It is also just two sleeps until my grandchildren can rip away the wrapping paper and play for a...
Is another government review an answer to our slide down the complexity rankings?
In a world where technological generations now live and die within months, can another government review truly capture the lightning-fast pace of innovation? Two years after ChatGPT's launch transformed our understanding of artificial intelligence, we're facing a...
Four traits of successful leaders.
The characteristics of leadership we expect from the local nonprofit or sporting club, to the largest businesses in the country, to the Prime Minister, are pretty much the same. Trust. We need to trust them. Trust is earned by the behaviour we observe, never just...