Strategic Discipline Blog

Failure is a feature, not a bug. You learn a lot from failure!

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Topics: Innovation Process, Innovation, Strategy - How, Strategy Creation, Play Bigger, Category Design

“Terror is the ultimate way to paralyze a people’s will to resist and destroy their ability to plan a strategic response. Such power is gained through sporadic acts of violence that create a constant feeling of threat, incubating a fear that spreads throughout the public sphere. The goal in a terror campaign is not battlefield victory but causing maximum chaos and provoking the other side into desperate overreaction. Melting invisibly into the population, tailoring their actions for the mass media, the strategists of terror create the illusion that they are everywhere and therefore that they are far more powerful than they really are. It is a war of nerves. The victims of terror must not succumb to fear or even anger; to plot the most effective counterstrategy, they must stay balanced. In the face of a terror campaign, one’s rationality is the last line of defense.” ~ 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene

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Topics: strategy, Effective Leadership, Strategy - How, 33 Strategies of War

As the Cheshire cat told Alice, in Alice in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you are going it doesn’t matter which road you take. Any road will get you there.”

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Topics: Strategic Planning, Strategy - How, Key Attribution Framework, 3HAG WAY, Swimlanes

The CEO Test: Master The Challenges That Make Or Break All Leaders, authors Adam Bryant, and Kevin Sharer provide the key elements a CEO needs for success. This is not a touchy-feely book, although it does address the need for establishing culture. Nor is it a prescriptive book about how to create the right strategy. It reveals Seven Key Tests to be a successful CEO with key insights from leaders who are provided as examples.

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Topics: Discipline Plan, Strategy Decision, Strategy - How, Strategy Question, Competitive Strategy, The CEO Test

When Positioning Systems started in 1998 my intention was to help businesses discover their unique and valuable position. For 20 years I helped business create messages to differentiate from their competition. Jack Trout and Al Ries’ classic marketing book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind provided this impetus. A classic positioning example was 7-Up’s, The Uncola!

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Topics: strategy, strategy decisions, Strategy - How, Low-Cost Strategy, Differentiation Strategy, Strategy Question, Competitive Strategy, Key Attribution Framework, 3HAG WAY

Michael Porter’s Definition of Strategy is: the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities.

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Topics: strategy, market dynamics, Strategy - How, Differentiation Strategy, 3HAG WAY

Let’s take two quick surveys today.

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Topics: strategy, competitive advantage, Strategy - How, Differentiation Strategy, Competitive Strategy, 3HAG WAY

If 2020 was a humbling year for you in terms of revenue growth, then it’s time to work on strategy.

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Topics: strategy, Strategy Decision, Strategy - How, Competitive Strategy, 3HAG WAY

"The greatest danger in business and life lies not in outright failure but in achieving success without understanding why you were successful in the first place."

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Topics: Jim Collins, Build up to Breakthrough Flywheel, Strategy Decision, Strategy - How, Turning the Flywheel, Flywheel, Flywheel Extension, Good to Great to Gone

Clarity has its rewards.

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Topics: Build up to Breakthrough Flywheel, strategy decisions, Strategy - How, Turning the Flywheel, Flywheel, bezonomics, brian dumaine