Prelude “Last thing I remember I was running for the door I had to find the passage back To the place I was before “Relax, ” said the night man “We are programmed to receive You can check out any time you like But you can never leave!” –Don Henley, Hotel California[i] Population can be […]
What Type of Strategist Are You?
In my book, I state that “Strategists should keep the ‘bad’ decisions from happening,”[1] before exploring the amount of work that goes into doing that. While not everyone will be preventing bad decisions or solving the largest strategic issues at work, a lot of people will solve various issues that will shape the trajectory of […]
What Was with Marvel Phase 4?
I don’t consider myself a cinephile. I also don’t really have the education or experience in filmmaking to criticize movies professionally or philosophically discuss what broadly advances cinema. However, like most people, I know what I love about movies and what will bring me to the theater. For the last 15 years and foreseeable future, […]
What Is the Corporate Strategy for Unions?
In many ways, this post is about whether I, as a strategist, would make a slide recommending union-busting. Slides are the norm in business communication and strategy making from the C-Suite on down. And I often wonder about how I would respond to different situations in that context. Personally, I have no direct professional experience […]
Why Capital One Cafes Highlight a Major Problem?
This post took me in a direction that I didn’t expect to go. I planned to highlight a strategic error, explain the importance of knowing your core business, and make recommendations about business decision making. But in retrospect, while researching Capital One Cafés, I learned about an obvious and long-term banking trend that is having […]
What is Actual Competition?: The Monday Night Wars
Competition does some weird things to a work environment. I’ve seen co-workers get tense, speculate wildly, see threats everywhere, and go in directions that probably revealed more about their personal psychology than the company’s strategic situation. And I understand. Competition is scary and disrupts the status quo. Competition brings the threat of instability, layoffs, […]