Most businesses exist in the trap of better, which is a race to commoditization; more of the same. There are no shortage of books, blog posts and articles on how to differentiate a business. There really isn’t a surefire guide on how to achieve game-changing differentiation, but there are principles. How can you differentiate your business?
Category Archives: Strategy
3 Reasons Why Making A Decision Can Be So Difficult
Decisions. Big and small, they are part of our everyday life. Everything from choosing what to eat, where to park, what to pay attention to, who you date, who you marry, what you buy; these decisions determine ones future. Yet we don’t consider this when making most of these decisions; specifically the day to day ones.
One Perspective is No Perspective
We’re all biased, so biased that we love to hang out with people who think like us, read stuff that we agree with and do stuff we like to do. It’s all good and well, but what we get in enjoyment we lose in perspective; because that one perspective that we hold isn’t the complete picture of life.
What Strategy Is: A Lesson From Southwest Airlines
in Leadership, Strategy
What is strategy? When done well, it describes how an organization wins; and serves as a guide to behavior in the day to day operations of the organization. Getting to this point is not easy, crafting strategy is hard. So hard that most company’s strategies are just more of the same; choosing to be a follower rather than a leader. All followers fall into the same strategy traps, and have to pay for it by competing on a race to the bottom.
Adopting New Habits Leads To Transformation
We all have moments where we lose track of things, where we lose our mind and say things we should’t say. A few months ago, during a call with a client, the CEO of the organization did just that. For the last 6 months I’ve been consulting for this organization, helping them think and develop a new strategic direction, and culture to support that direction.
How To Think Clearly
Thinking is hard. The main reason is because the brain wants to be efficient, so it develops routines and habits that are hard to break. That’s why sometimes your head hurts when you really put your mind to work; you’re forcing your brain to break it’s routine and be unefficient.
There Is No One Thing
A few years ago I was asked to give a speech to a group of entrepreneurs on their way to Startup Chile. As part of my talk they asked me to write a list of 3 to 5 things that I do to be successful. While I did do that list, I explicitly said “I can tell you my 3 to 5 things I do on a daily basis but that’s what works for me, in the context of my life, my personality and mindset.”