Oh, the strategy pundits hate me! It’s not because I’m tall, good looking and from Iowa (well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad), it’s because I think Strategy as a “Discipline” is way overblown.  I won’t go as far as the Harvard Business Review to state that “Strategy is Dead”, but the importance of carefully defining a strategy (typically done in the ivory towers of the puzzle palace) and then commanding all the little…

Everyone wants to restart the economy safely.  Everyone.  The question isn’t “if”, it’s “when” and “how” and somehow that’s when politics gets involved.  So, let’s stop pointing fingers at “others” and blaming them for the world’s woes.  Now is the time to work together and create a plan to address the “when” and “how” questions.  And here’s a…

The COVID-19 crisis has hammered home the importance for organizations to become more digital.  And I suspect that most organizations are thinking that just means being able to support remote customer engagements and business operations.  But that’s not nearly sufficient.  Organizations that are thriving during COVID-19 are those that have gone beyond just “digitalizing” their engagements and operations, but are actively leveraging granular customer,…

The Covid19 pandemic has given me a chance to catch up on some reading. One of the books I recently finished reading is called “Building a Story Brand” by Donald Miller. It’s a short and very effective read (which all books should be). The premise of the book is that all sales and marketing messages should be structured like a movie, and successful movies have a standard approach for telling an engaging story (see Figure 1).…