More ‘transformation’ hype
Just had to pour some cooling water over another bit of hype on this issue. Harvard Business Publishing just promoted ‘Constant Transformation Is the New Normal‘ by Scott Anthony. See below for my reponse: Read more
Understanding customer churn
Great seminar last week by my colleague Bruce Hardie at London Business School on the complications involved in the simple idea of customer churn. Bruce probably knows more than most experts how to extract useful information on the issues from corporate systems. A few key messages I heard … Read more
What is strategy? … and the strategy life-cycle
Just working on the first chapter of the textbook 2nd edition, and thought it needed a bit more on this question – found the only way to explain to newbies was to go through an organization’s life and track what ’strategic management’ actually does over that time-horizon. Main messages are:
- The choice of strategic ‘position’ [what to provide, to whom and how, relative to rivals] is a very rare activity.
- Substantial strategic initiatives [acquisition, new market entry etc] occur occasionally.
- By far the majority of the task is steering [a.ka. implementing] the strategy from period to period.
So – how come the attention in all the textbooks and journals is in precisely the opposite priority? Read more