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Many theories have emerged over the years about how to grow your business at a competitor’s expense. Having identified your competitor’s areas of excellence – you might think that the best way to grow is to ‘out excel’ the competitor. Our experience has shown that if you are not the leader, don’t try to play…

If, or when, the time is right, you may want to bear this in mind: About 10 years ago, while I was working as Chief Marketing Officer for DPD Group, we decided to use the Strategic Thinking Process of a consulting company – previously unknown to me – that had been highly recommended by the…

Since new-to-the-market products are the essence of strategic supremacy, why are companies spending their time, money and energy on product extensions at the expense of new-to-the-market products? Most companies commit one, or more, of four ‘sins’ that kill new product creation and lead to a company’s loss of supremacy over its competitors. Unfortunately, all 4…

One of the interesting misconceptions that senior executives have about their job descriptions revolves around what it is they think they manage. During my 20 years of consulting work with senior executives, I have often asked them: “What do you, as managers, ‘manage’?” Their answer, 99% of the time, is “people”. “Not so,” say I!…

1.Understanding why you need a Strategy: To become a leader in your industry and to achieve sustained strategic supremacy, the top management team must fully understand the importance of effectively formulating and executing a winning strategy. 2.Don’t Formulate your Strategy in Isolation: In a lot of organisations, the strategy is created by the CEO in…

The success and failure of any organisation rests on the quality of the thousands of decisions made and implemented every day, every week and every month. Like much other business jargon, the term “Critical Thinking” has been around for many years. However, few can describe what it is, and fewer still can explain how to…

Amid all the changes facing leaders, there is one thing that will remain constant: formulating and executing strategies and plans that will ensure survival and generate future sustainable growth and wealth for their organisations. This has always been, and always will be, the primary and most important task of C-level leadership. A vital input into…

One major obstacle leaders encounter when trying to develop a game changing strategy is that the leadership team cannot agree on what strategy actually is. Each executive has his or her own view or definition. This is not surprising. Even the strategy gurus that confused leaders turn to when seeking an answer cannot always agree!…

Although the concepts of vision and strategy are frequently used, few executives understand the relationship between them and this can prove a real obstacle in developing a game-changing strategy. Let us attempt to demystify these two separate but complementary concepts. Vision, in our view, is the construction of a mental picture of what an organisation…

Many books have been written on leadership, but few have been able to describe the skills of leadership in any detail except to attribute it to a “trait of personality”. Our view is that there are some fundamental skills of transformative leadership that can be articulated, learned and perfected by almost anyone in any organisation.…