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Business Rocks: What Does Culture Eat for a Mid-Morning Break?
How confident are you that your organisation would pass the test and that culture isn’t eating the truth in your business?
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Strategy’s 7 Fatal Flaws
In my experience, many successful CEOs and senior executives dislike the time they have to spend on developing strategy. There are two reasons for this: First, strategy is seen as being difficult. Consultants and academics have somehow succeeded in creating a...
Business Rocks – The Last 98% of Success
This week’s riff: If you want to achieve success in losing weight, the best way is to manage your calorie intake on a daily basis. Similarly, if you want to get stronger, you should undertake regular – ideally daily – exercise, and if you fancy becoming a good guitar...
Cross Shots: The Magic Number
Stuart Cross talks us through the ‘real’ magic number for business and how you can implement this into your strategy.
The Most Important Driver Of Your Strategy
Your performance goals drive your business strategy. If your goals are fuzzy, weak or unclear, don’t be surprised if your strategy has similar characteristics. On the other hand, clear, ambitious goals – such as becoming the #1 player in your market, or achieving...
Business Rocks: The Critical 4%
This week’s riff: As the United Kingdom begins its seemingly irreversible process of leaving the European Union, many commentators are still trying to understand how the Leave side won? Some of the big arguments – the £350 million budget, immigration and ‘taking back...
5 Strategies To Accelerate Innovation
Strategic advances are made when organisations become the first to find a profitable way to exploit new opportunities. These opportunities may be created by changes in customer tastes, technology, economics or other external factors. Critically, strategic advances are...
Business Rocks: Finney’s KPIs
This week’s riff: Finney, our beloved cocker spaniel, is an expert environmental scanner. Each morning he will lie on our bed and see what clothes my wife and I put on. If we are wearing business clothes, he realizes that he won’t be going for a long walk for a while...
Shifting From ‘Quick Wins’ To ‘Big Wins’
One of the biggest drains on your organization’s time and energy are “quick win” projects. These projects often emerge at the end of a team or departmental ‘away day’. Following a brainstorm of potential ideas to improve performance, each idea is reviewed on two...
Business Rocks: The Danger of Bargain Dungarees
This week’s riff: My wife came back from her trip to Lidl this week with a pair of dungarees. I know that Lidl is famous for its impulse offers, so that’s not perhaps so surprising, but the dungarees were a size 10. Given that my wife is 5 foot 2 inches, 7 ½ stones...
The 3 Drivers Of Strategic Success
All the CEOs I meet are clear that their top priority is to deliver their strategic vision and achieve their performance goals. And yet the evidence shows that successfully delivering a vision is the exception rather than the norm. I have worked with dozens of...
Cross Shots: Cracking The Growth Code
Here’s a tool you can use to balance your time between managing your current year performance while also developing ideas that will deliver your future growth.
Business Rocks: How Constraints Drive Creativity
This week’s riff: Following on from last week’s post about the new, higher standard SATs that my 11-year old son will soon be sitting, I was talking to a client about her son’s school. The new tests mean that 99% of schools fail to get all of their pupils to the...
Business Rocks: The Standard Clause
This week’s riff: My youngest son, Louis, is now 11 years old and is in his last year of primary school, which means that he is taking his SATs in the summer. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the SATs syllabus has changed significantly in recent years. In particular,...
How DFS Step-Changed Its Level Of Customer Focus
Fast, agile companies are relentless in using customer feedback to drive improvements and to make the necessary changes to accelerate growth and performance. In my latest book, First & Fast, I met with Andrew Stephenson, who created a market-leading...
Business Rocks – How To Build Strategic Commitment
This week’s riff: How do you build wider commitment to a new growth strategy? After all, it’s highly likely that some people are going to be negative about whatever you come up with and will be resistant to the changes you propose. In essence, you have only three...
How Richard Baker Put “The Chemists” Back Into Boots
As part of my research for my latest book, First & Fast, I interviewed Richard Baker, the Chairman of Whitbread plc. I had worked with Richard when he was the CEO of Boots. During our conversation Richard emphasized the importance of establishing...
Fixed On The Vision, Flexible On The Journey
I’ve always thought that the term ‘strategic planning’ was an oxymoron. As a ritual, three-year plans are about as effective to twenty-first century business success as wassailing has been to English apple production. Each may make the people involved feel that they...
Cross Shots: Are We There Yet?
Better or Different
This week’s riff: There are three ways that you can lead your market. The first is to be better than everyone else. That’s fine, up to a point, but in many markets most customers have already made their choice about what the ‘best’ is and are unwilling to spend...
Business Rocks: D Is For…
This week's focus: My wife and I are currently redeveloping a new house. The work seems never-ending, as are the decisions. My wife has also been very busy at work, so I offered to help her sort out the tiles for the bathroom by going to the tile store – my client,...
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