Missing in action
It’s 4:30am Saturday. Raining. I should be asleep. Perhaps if I could focus on the rain. But as I’m lying there, in my mind I’m drafting a note to the bank. My story has been told before, but I wanted to share my experience.
AI. Brilliant but flawed - just like humans
I was recently reminded of the Lassonde Curve which illustrates the value shift during the lifecycle of a mineral discovery. Coincidentally, whilst working on a consulting project in biotech currently, I was made aware of a similar curve in biotech which describes the phenomenon of escaping the valley of death.
Slowly, then quickly...
In mid-2015 Woolworths was the poster child for a board and executive that forgot managing a company is about more than shareholder returns. Today that moniker belongs to QANTAS.
Smartest guys in the room… what could go wrong?
Commonwealth Bank (‘Which bank?’) is just the most recent example of overconfidence in the ‘intellectual capacity’ of a leadership team to steer the organisation through the ‘white water’ of modern corporate life.
MBAs, strategy and judgement
The objective of an MBA strategy program is to expose leaders of the future to various theories, frameworks and concepts of strategy. But the reality is that many of strategy’s concepts are not necessarily settled.
What driving fast cars can teach you about strategy…
In an earlier life, I designed a leadership development program which gave a group of leaders the opportunity to drive high-performance vehicles at speed through a mini slalom course (see below). The challenge was to drive the circuit as fast as possible.
I feel the need, the need for speed...
When we think about decision-making, we probably think first about decision quality: getting decisions right. And why not? Rio Tinto would prefer it made a better decision when it spent $39B on the Alcan acquisition (since written off ca. $33B).
Woolworths and the normalisation of deviance
Twenty years ago, Dianne Vaughan coined the term ‘normalisation of deviance to explain the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. It describes how seemingly small choices, made in the context of daily decisions repeated over time, “can camouflage a cumulative directionality that too often is discernible only in hindsight”.
Apparently, mining blew the boom ... but who's the greater fool?
Each year, PwC release a comprehensive report on the state of the mining industry. What can we learn from the PwC Mine 2016 report?
Business behaving badly... we're no worse than the others
Business leaders often lament the lack of political leadership and community support. It’s only going to get harder. WA Premier Colin Barnett, at LNG 18 – the premier global conference of the LNG industry – offered some advice to the industry: you guys have to do more of the heavy lifting.
Strategy lessons from the greatest CEO in tech history… and it's not Jobs
The recent death of Andy Grove passed unremarked in the Australian press. Grove has been called the greatest CEO in tech history: he mentored a young Steve Jobs. A former Intel CEO, Grove was responsible for the transformation of Intel from a ‘memory company’ to a ‘microprocessor company’.
The cost of presumptions - international case studies
At their most dangerous presumptions are assumptions that are accepted as a ‘social fact’. This makes them more dangerous than assumptions. Assumptions should be explicitly identified and can be tested. But we remain blind to our own presumptions.
Breakout strategy: what if anything were possible?
At its core, strategy is design. And great design starts with the question: what if anything was possible? If we start with constraints, we get designs for tomorrow that merely tweak today.
Avoiding grey rhinos... strategic renewal and the status quo trap
As organisations shake off the New Year’s cobwebs, many begin to think about ‘strategy’. Perhaps begin by asking: where are we on the strategy life cycle curve? Different phases of the strategy life cycle present different challenges.
5 tips for better strategic decision making
Imagine you are a major retailer planning to enter an ‘adjacent’ $50B retail market, and you specifically want to attack the market leader for ‘strategic’ reasons. But there’s a catch.
Twiggy's folly
Twiggy is a larger-than-life figure in Australian business and has done much that should be admired. But his latest call for governments – any government will do – to ‘do something’ sits right there alongside his call for Australia’s iron ore majors to form a cartel.
Take a deep breath - iron ore markets are doing what you should expect
I remember attending an AICD forum a few years ago when one of the presenters, a non-executive Director of a mining services company, boldly declared “the iron ore price won’t fall below $100/t while I’m still around – trust me”. I hope his health proves more robust than his forecast.
Being 'right' is never enough
Two stories in 8 days – Emeco and iiNet – confronting the same issue. In each instance the Board has supported a strategy which is now being roundly questioned – or condemned – by major shareholders.