Digital strategy is dead, strategic thinking lives.
Too often I hear the term 'Digital Strategy' used as if it were an outcome, some discrete set of activities to be completed. To my mind, this is a misuse of the term. As it is usually used, the word 'Digital’ is all about the devices, the technology, whereas...
Labour costs should be a strategic metric
The current 'argy-bargy' around wages policy makes the mistake of assuming it is a binary equation. Pay a dollar more/hour for labour and profit is reduced by the equivalent amount. This assumes that people working for you are only doing so for the money, and...
What makes a workshop work?
There are a lot of misconceptions about workshops, and having run many, they are hard work, although participants rarely see that work. 'Blue sky' thinking is sometimes necessary, but in the absence of strategic discipline, can become completely disconnected...
12 ideas to enable better strategic outcomes
'The task is not to come up with better results, but to ask better questions.' This is so true it has become a cliché. The challenge is to find and ask those better questions. Following are 12 ideas that may assist the thought processes you undertake to...
Interpreting the great and confusing game of strategy
Strategy is a bit like economics, go to 5 so called strategists, and you will get 6 opinions. This is terminally annoying to our accounting and engineering friends who thrive on certainty. However, it is perfectly OK, as we are dealing with the future,...
The 6 essential elements of a successful brief
The purpose of a brief is not to be brief. A brief, for whatever purpose it is written should be a catalyst for creative thinking, examination of options, and father of a robust solution. This applies equally to an engineering brief as it does to an...
Another strategy myth flushed down the toilet
One of the standard assumptions about strategy is that it evolves from the top. Those at the top of the organisation have access to all the information and resources necessary to craft the strategy that will then be deployed through the organisation....
The four essential questions for successful marketing: A follow-up
Last week I published a post that outlined the four essential questions for successful marketing. A number of people contacted me and said, 'more detail please'. So, here goes: What problem can I solve? Unless you can solve a problem for someone, why would they...
Where does responsibility for marketing really lie?
"Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing Department" David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett Packard with Bill Hewlett in 1939 made that observation decades ago. He was right. At a time when every customer touchpoint is a marketing...
The month that ushered in the world we live in.
November 2022 is the 33rd birthday of what may be the most important month in recent history, November 1989. A momentous month. It saw the fall of the Berlin wall, the beginning of the end of communism and the soviet empire. We met that occasion with...