Archive for Strategy
Maltz on Risk
We must have the courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness. – Maxwell Maltz
Buffers
Greetings today from Las Vegas, where I didn’t expect to be. Las Vegas was supposed to be an overnight stop during my road trip from Denver to San Francisco, but that was before I found out that I had a broken windshield and that my insurance company had no idea I was driving my current [...]
There’s Nothing as Dangerous as an Idea…
There’s Nothing as Dangerous as an Idea When It’s the Only One You Have. – Bill O’Hanlon in Do One Thing Different — and other uncommonly sensible solutions to life’s persistent problems.
Have Fun Make Money — Great Harvest Bread Company
“Welcome to Great Harvest Bread Company! Would you like to try a free sample?” If you’ve been to one of their franchises, you’ve heard the welcome. When my cousin Rich was younger, he’d go into the Chapel Hill NC store and ask for a big slice of bread, which he’d top with about two tablespoons [...]
Quadrants, Round 1: Do You Want It? Do You Have It?
Business thinker must have a million 2×2 grids for classifying things. While chatting with my B-school advisor some years ago, I theorized that most business thinking has to get reduced to a 2×2 grid, because people can’t get their minds around anything bigger than what they can draw on a 2-dimensional piece of paper with [...]
How much data? How much analysis?
Gather enough data and do enough analysis to make a good decision. Then decide. Then act. There are many famed quotes on the theme of “how much is enough”: Lore has it that someone once asked Abraham Lincoln, “How long should a man’s legs be?” and that he answered “Long enough to reach the ground.” [...]
Data for decisionmaking
“See what you can do with real data?” One of my clients’ other advisors said that to my client right after I’d presented some analysis of his marketspace. In the previous year, another marketing consultant had spent a lot of my client’s time (and money) on branding analysis. But he hadn’t taken the time to [...]
But if you owe the bank $1 billion and can’t pay…
[Donald Trump] understood a famous axiom: If you owe the bank $1 million and can’t pay, you’re in trouble, but if you owe the bank $1 billion and can’t pay, the bank’s in trouble. The moment that captured his strategy perfectly came when Trump’s CFO received an $800,000 quarterly insurance bill for Trump’s yacht, Trump [...]
“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste”
Hired to replace Robert Dynes in the aftermath of a management meltdown in which UC administrators flouted, circumvented and violated university policies governing pay and perks, the 63-year-old [Mark] Yudof knows his mission when he officially takes over next month.”I’ve really got to get the trains running on time (at UC). There are a lot [...]
The First Purpose of a Small Business
The first purpose of a small business is to serve the entrepreneur who created it and who owns it. The business may have other purposes: to serve customers and even to serve the community. But before these, the business must serve the entrepreneur. How does a business serve its owner? Certainly, the business should make [...]
