Almost every disappointing strategy engagement shares a single origin. The team did not solve the wrong problem badly; it solved the wrong problem well. The analysis was rigorous, the slides were clean, the logic held together, and none of it
The most difficult sentence to say inside a healthy, ambitious organization is “we will not do that.” Every strategy, stripped to its essentials, is a set of choices about where to concentrate finite attention, capital, and talent. Yet the language
Most planning rests on a hidden assumption: that the future is a single place we are traveling toward, and the job of planning is to predict it accurately. This produces the annual ritual of the point forecast—one number for demand,
When a strategy fails, the postmortem usually settles on a reassuring conclusion: the strategy was sound, execution let it down. This narrative is comforting because it protects the people who authored the strategy and blames a diffuse, faceless process. It
Most strategic plans look impressive in the boardroom and fall apart the moment they meet the market. The gap between a well-articulated strategy and a strategy that actually works is rarely about intelligence or analysis. It is about whether the
The failure of a consulting engagement is usually decided in the first two weeks, long before any analysis is delivered or any recommendation is debated. The most common causes of failure are not analytical mistakes. They are problems of scope,
Pricing is one of the most powerful levers a business has, and one of the most neglected. Many companies set prices through a mechanical process: calculate the cost, add a target margin, and announce the result. This approach treats pricing
Leaders are often told to create a compelling vision, and many do. The problem is that a vision, on its own, changes very little. Inspirational language about being the leader in a category or delighting every customer feels meaningful in
Watching competitors is a natural and necessary part of running a business, but it carries a hidden trap. The more closely a company studies its rivals, the more tempted it becomes to imitate them. Over time, an entire industry can
Organizations are good at starting things and remarkably bad at stopping them. Every company has a graveyard of initiatives that should have been killed months or years before they finally were, projects that absorbed money, talent, and attention long after