Important Complements — I was asked a good question last week by a reader (Ben) about value proposition and competitive advantage. Are they the same thing? Or are they different, and if so, how do they relate to one another? It was a question that echoed others that I have received. So, I…

Wishing for Something Doesn’t Mean You Will Get It — Last week, a client asked me a question about organizational structure, and I wrote him a short memo in response. That made me realize that I should write more on one aspect of my note, which concerned single-point accountability. To that end, I have dedicated my 40th Year II Playing…

Three Important Truths — I have received many reader requests for advice on how to think about segmentation when creating strategy. Segmentation is a huge subject with which I could fill several books, so I thought I would focus on the few key things about which I always think when I am working on…

Don’t Let the Short Game Blind You — This piece is spurred by the events in Ukraine, which are tragic for the people of Ukraine — all of them, whether east, west, south, north, or in exile. Vladimir Putin, with his indiscriminate and unapologetic bombing of innocent civilians, has become the latest reminder that periodically the ultimate manifestation…

Don’t Let VUCA Paralyze Your Strategy — I have a love/hate relationship with the popular acronym for a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment — VUCA. Actually, the relationship is more hate than love because of the threat to strategy of the concept of VUCA. So, I decided to write my 37th Year II Playing to Win/Practitioner…

Use Strategy to Drive the Dependent Variable — A big disappointment of mine is that the overwhelming majority of person-hours spent notionally on strategy aren’t actually spent on it. They are spent on planning, which is a crying shame. I have only had limited success in helping folks gain actionable understanding of the distinction between the two, but…

How to Learn Instead of Cover Up — I have been meaning to write on the subject of forgiveness since the mid 1990s when I worked consecutively for two deeply religious organizations — the first and only times that happened. Recently, I was spurred to think about the topic by a question from a gentleman who works at…

Why You Need to Pay More Attention to Small Customers — I am always interested in broad, slowly-developing trends because they can be overlooked if you don’t pay attention — frog-boiling stuff (though that metaphor is actually an urban myth). The trend on my mind concerns how to think about the size of your customers and, while mainly relevant in the…

Utilizing the Four Quadrants of the Virtue Matrix — For corporations, sustainability has moved from a maybe to a must over the past decade. It is no longer a question of whether or not to have a conscious and coherent strategy. The question for corporations is choosing where and how to deploy their sustainability investments. That choice is challenging…