Starbucks and the US$100M hire?
In August 2024 Starbucks removed its then CEO, Narasimhan, and appointed a ‘rock star’ CEO & Chair, Brian Niccol, with a hiring package worth more than US$100M. SBX shares immediately jumped almost 25% adding ca. US$25B to their market value.
Is your strategy compelling?
In my regular MBA teaching session on strategy execution I offer 7 principles that underpin execution. Number 1 on the list: start with a compelling strategy. It might seem obvious, but can you, hand on heart, declare your strategy is ‘compelling’?
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).
Opening minds... thinking differently
Strategy is ultimately an expression of collective mental models. To create a strategy that is more than ‘mere incrementalism ’, we must therefore create new mental models. Most major strategic shifts reflect a fundamental shift in the framing of the strategic context.
MBA reflections... what stuck?
In parallel with my consulting/advisory practice, I just finished teaching business strategy – the traditional capstone unit – to 47 MBA students. What stuck across that 12-week period? One way of judging that is through the students’ learning journals.
Looking back, looking forward... a strategist's view
2016 was my second year of serious blogging. In the last year, I wrote 23 blogs and LinkedIn posts. My focus reflects my roots: the strategy process, strategy execution, and leadership. This year, corporate behaviour got a couple of (dis)honourable mentions.
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”.
Can someone help me please? I'm stuck!
At a recent workshop on strategy execution, one of the executives said she felt ‘stuck’ as she thought about how to translate their strategy into outcomes. That’s unsurprising. Research consistently shows organisations massively under-perform on strategy execution.
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?
Rethinking leadership development - it's about strategy execution
About 15 years ago, a major Australian resources company set out to develop ‘world-class leadership’. But Professor Chris Worley rebuts the usual prescription of ‘more leadership’. He argues that asking people to change behaviours without changing the underlying system – the structure, systems and processes – is borderline immoral.
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’.
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.
Looking back, looking forward
2015 will go down as the year when I really started to blog, with 36 blogs. The dominant themes reflect my roots: leadership, strategy and business models. Based on reader responses, the three favourite posts were…
Austerity is not a strategy
Three clients, three strategy workshops, 8 days: intense. Each client is at a different stage of the strategy life cycle. And each workshop highlighted a theme which reflected where that client sits on the strategy life cycle.
The profound responsibility of leadership
The most creative conversations of our professional lives engage both our emotional and analytic selves. These conversations are the source of inspiration and sense-making that leave you buzzing hours later; that wake you in the middle of the night; that create new insights through connecting previously disconnected ideas.