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Swing Thru the Ball

What should you do? Do you stop things? Start things? Answer: yes, to both. Of course you should rethink and reevaluate but if you do that for long you put at risk the current business or effort simply because you didn't execute what you could have done.

Tags: planning , strategy , team

Know Yourself

What matters to you? This isn't just a touchy-feely question, it's the bedrock that describes who you are. What is deeply felt and has meaning for you will ultimately inspire you to do your best work. It took me years...

Tags: communication , strategy , truth

Sit Forward

How often do you go to a meeting and check-out? Do you ever tune-out people you don't agree with? Make the decision today to engage and be truly present. Instead of judging, participate. Embrace whatever you find. I call it...

Tags: participate , sit forward , strategy

Make a Conscious Descision to Lead Ideas

Big contributions come about through conscious preparation and planning. That’s what strategy is about. And it requires being a leader of ideas. Be an advocate, a co-creator, a facilitator, a lobbyist for the creation, development and sponsorship of ideas that...

Tags: conscious , leader , strategy

Performance vs. Behavior

We're schooled, whether through B-school or working in organizations, in the outer trappings of success - status, money, title and so forth. How do we tie that to individual satisfaction and a feeling of success? What we likely haven't been...

Tags: strategy , touchpoint enhancer , value creation

Employees and Strategy

For many executives, the two words above don't go together. Why? Because they think strategy is done in the C-suite. I'm here to tell you that's old thinking. Life is different now. Status is less relevant. We're in an era...

Tags: curiosity , employees , Google , openess , strategy

Harvard Business Publishing: Umair Haque - What Apple Knows That Facebook Doesn't

Too often, we don't recognize the power of platforms - even in Silicon Valley. Nilofer Merchant, Rubicon's CEO, writes frequently on the topic and ties it together with strategy. The piece below by Umair Haque, draws an interesting difference between...

Tags: Apple , Facebook , platform , strategy

Strategy vs. Truth

What happens inside an employee when strategy doesn't jive with what they know to be truth? In a millisecond, a string of questions unwinds. Questions like: Do they expect me to say something? Will I get in trouble if I...

Tags: demand dialogue , employee , questions , strategy , truth

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements: People

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements - power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. If you miss tuning one, you'll fail. Add items that don't blend and you'll fail. People In an organization of any size, people bring their...

Tags: 5 Structural Elements , people , strategy

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements: Process

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements - power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. Miss tuning one and you'll fail. Add items that don't blend and you'll fail. Process Process is the way that ideas are handled and consumed...

Tags: process , strategy

The Five Structural Elements of Strategy: Idea Generation

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements - power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. Miss tuning one and you'll fail. Add items that don't blend and you'll fail. Idea Generation How ideas are generated affects the quantity and quality...

Tags: Google , idea generation , Murderboarding , Nilofer Merchant , strategy

The Wall Street Journal: Web Piracy: The Enemy Within?

While this Wall Street Journal story is about the entertainment industry, all of us involved in software would do well to take a look. Piracy of all kinds costs our industry billions every year, representing profits lost for shareholders. Some...

Tags: anti-piracy , Atlantic Records , band , Buckcherry , Ethan Smith , Piracy , Sarah McBride , strategy , Wall Street Journal

The 5 Structural Elements of Strategy: Decision-Making

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements - power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. Miss tuning one and you'll fail. Add items that don't blend and you'll fail. Decision-Making The way decisions are made in organizations determines how ideas...

Tags: decision-making , Nilofer Merchant , strategy

The 5 Structural Elements of Strategy: Power Distribution

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements - power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. Miss tuning one and you'll fail. Add items that don't blend and you'll fail. Power Distribution This dictates who to involve, how much information each...

Tags: 5 structural elements , Nilofer Merchant , power distribution , strategy

The Missing Strategic Ingredient

Part of the difficulty in strategy creation is the temptation to direct rather than ask open-ended questions. When the C-suite sends a directive telling people to head in a certain direction, thinking isn't involved. Teams start to align against that...

Tags: culture , Nilofer Merchant , strategy , values

Strategy Failure = Strategy Creation Process Gone Awry

We've all seen it - the company that makes a play for new customers and finds they've targeted incorrectly. The product launch that fizzles. A big rebranding move that ends up being underwhelming. Is strategy failure due to poor leadership,...

Tags: customer , knowledge collection devices , Nilofer Merchant , strategy , wikis

Don't Miss the Middle When Formulating Strategy

What purpose does middle management serve in strategy development? Misunderstandings between the C-suite and middle management lead to bad decisions, loss of time and loss of money. Many organizations have flattened management structures. Those that haven't are working on it....

Tags: C-suite , how , middle management , strategy

Lessons from Amazon Kindle for other tech companies

One of the toughest tasks in the technology industry is jump-starting sales of a platform -- a product that requires a lot of third-party content or software. A PC without applications is a doorstop; an iPod without music is just...

Tags: amazon , e-books , kindle , platforms , strategy

Okay, here's a Statistic

So Bain has done a growth survey that shows "senior managers spend less than 3% of their time on the long term view of the future." In comparison, the same study shows, they "spend 40% of their time focused on the things that go on in the 4 walls of the company".

Tags: Bain , Long-Term View of Future , Strategy , Thinking

Marvel Story

Marvel Comics used to sell comic books. That was their business. They created comics, they sold them in the form of books. Then, one day, they realize that the real asset isn't the publishing business. Which is what they had directly built. What they had indirectly built is characters that had stories. And those were assets.

Tags: Business Model , Catster , Clusteraps , Google , MySQL , Revenue Source , Strategy , SugarCRM

In a bar fight, what are you prepared to do?

Competition in the tech industry is a fundamental. Without it, we would never have seen the innovations and incredibly cool stuff that have informed, transformed, and improved our daily lives. Think about search and how much we use it to...

Tags: competitive , Microsoft , Netscape , strategy , VMware