by Stuart Cross | Jan 24, 2025 | Business Rocks
Edwyn Collins is one of my all-time favourite musicians. You might know him from his worldwide hit, A Girl Like You, but he was also the singer, songwriter and driving force behind the band Orange Juice, who had a hit called Rip It Up in the dim and distant past, as...
by Stuart Cross | Jan 17, 2025 | Business Rocks
I was walking Finney, our cocker spaniel, across the fields this week when he got attracted by a scent. Immediately, his head went down, his tail started wagging and he excitedly pursued the trail. In fact, he was so focused on the smell he completely missed the fact...
by Stuart Cross | Jan 10, 2025 | Business Rocks
Today is the ninth anniversary of the David Bowie’s passing. I came rather late to appreciating the talent of Bowie, but over the years I’ve not only come to admire him as a singer and songwriter, but also as a great collaborator. Bowie had a long connection with the...
by Stuart Cross | Jan 3, 2025 | Business Rocks
I’ve just fixed our kitchen tap (or faucet for our North American subscribers). Well, I say I fixed it. To be honest, the tap has been dripping for the past few weeks but has now, for reasons I don’t understand, stopped dripping. In other words, it’s fixed itself. As...
by Stuart Cross | Dec 20, 2024 | Business Rocks
This is my last post of the year, so let me first say Happy Christmas to you all, thank you for your support in 2024, and all the very best for 2025! Part of my role is to offer advice to my clients, and so I’ve been thinking about some of the best bits of advice I’ve...
by Stuart Cross | Nov 4, 2024 | Business Rocks
This is the 400th edition of Business Rocks. I wrote the first edition nearly 10 years ago and (nearly) every Friday morning since then, I’ve sat down with a blank piece of paper to write a new piece. [And the Business Rocks series came after more than 200 editions of...
by Stuart Cross | Oct 25, 2024 | Business Rocks
A retail CEO once invited me to the opening of a new concept store. The company had made a big investment in the new concept and there were high hopes that the trial would succeed. The store looked great, and the initial customer reaction was extremely positive. I...
by Stuart Cross | Oct 11, 2024 | Business Rocks
A survey of senior executives found that less than a quarter of them agreed that they made big, strategic decisions during their strategic planning process. Less than a quarter! In other words, over 75% of corporate strategy programmes failed to move the dial on their...
by Stuart Cross | Oct 4, 2024 | Business Rocks
I have been running my consulting business for over 18 years now. In that time, I’ve been fortunate to have worked with over 90 different companies, in more than a dozen different countries and have run literally hundreds of strategy workshops and meetings. So, I...
by Stuart Cross | Sep 27, 2024 | Business Rocks
Mick Herron’s literary creation of the Jackson Lamb character – so brilliantly played by Gary Oldman in the Slow Horses TV series – is one of my absolute all-time favourites. In my list of all-time literary characters, he’s up there with Le Carre’s George Smiley,...
by Stuart Cross | Sep 13, 2024 | Business Rocks
The phrase, “Perfect is the enemy of good” was first written down by Voltaire in the eighteenth century. Three hundred years on and it’s a lesson that many of us still struggle to take on board. The desire for perfection on your most important projects can,...
by Stuart Cross | Sep 6, 2024 | Business Rocks
It’s only early September, but the swallows that have been swooping across the fields of our village all summer have already left for Africa. They must have seen next week’s weather forecast! It’s a time of change for our family, too. Our two older sons, who both...
by Stuart Cross | Aug 30, 2024 | Business Rocks
One of my favourite words is ‘groak’. It’s a medieval word that means looking at someone’s plate of food in the hope that you’ll be offered some of it. Dogs are great groakers, but so too are many businesses. Executives look at the success of their rivals and ask,...
by Stuart Cross | Aug 23, 2024 | Business Rocks
I read an interesting newspaper column this week that highlighted the fact that many of the leading thinkers of the last two centuries were ‘scholars, but not academics.’ Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, for example, were experts in their field without being...
by Stuart Cross | Aug 2, 2024 | Business Rocks
It’s that time of year again. The schools have broken for their summer vacation and many of you will be enjoying a well-earned rest from work. With that in mind, your summer holidays are a great time to reflect on where you are now, the progress you’re making and what...
by Stuart Cross | Jul 26, 2024 | Business Rocks
I’ve just had my first experience with ChatGPT. As an experiment, I gave it some of my recent articles and asked it to suggest some topics for this week’s newsletter. Having given me 10 options, I chose one and asked my new best on-line friend to write a 400-word...
by Stuart Cross | Jul 19, 2024 | Business Rocks
My wife and I had the pleasure of attending the university graduation ceremonies of two of our sons this week. The ceremonies were very different in nature – while one was relatively small and intimate, the other was large with a party atmosphere – but they were both...
by Stuart Cross | Jul 12, 2024 | Business Rocks
I don’t know too much about Brian Eno, but he has produced and collaborated on some of my favourite music. The former keyboard player with Roxy Music has worked with truly great artists including David Bowie, U2, Coldplay and Talking Heads, with whom he produced...
by Stuart Cross | Jul 5, 2024 | Business Rocks
The Labour Party won a landslide victory in yesterday’s UK general election. Keir Starmer, the new Prime Minister, has led his party to a victory that involved winning 64% of the seats despite only attracting 34% of the votes. The psephologists call this phenomenon...
by Stuart Cross | Jun 14, 2024 | Business Rocks
Last weekend the European Parliament elections were held across the European Union. I was struck by the results in Germany. The map, below, shows the leading party in each voting district. The grey colour shows where the centre-right CSU party won the most votes,...
