Blog Yes & Know

Avoiding Strategic Failure

I've watched strategy being developed within companies like Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nokia. I've seen strategy created by individuals. I've seen the big suits of Bain and McKinsey at work. I've seen it done well, and occasionally I've seen it done poorly. Having read more than 100 books that define the best thinking on strategy, I've noticed that following the existing methods often doesn't yield success. It's not just the methodology. Here are five reasons strategy fails in businesses:

Is Business a Community?

Yesterday, a debate ensued about whether business is a community. It is not said one party; community is this soft thing and business is fundamentally about the results that a …

Scobleizer Gets it Right

That is why MSFT is going to have a tough time competing with Google...MSFT is a beautiful piece of software...too bad it isn't a harbinger of a beautiful business model for the future.

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 …

Leader of Ideas

Big contributions come about through preparation, dialogue and thinking together. That’s what strategy is about. To a novice, strategy often gets linked to the meetings, the planning, the process and …

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 …

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 …

What Apple Knows That Facebook Doesn’t

Too often, we don't recognize the power of platforms - even in Silicon Valley. The piece below by Umair Haque, draws an interesting difference between the way Apple and Facebook …

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 …