Hot strategic yoga

This is something I’ve learned from all those war games: Watch out for the war metaphor in your strategic thinking, and challenge it if you see it. The challenge doesn’t cost you anything. You can always go back to the war metaphor if you really think it works.

Same-store sales rose 14.3% when using RFID tags on clothes. Is there a first-tagger advantage, and is it worth having? Let’s think it through.

“Where is the evidence that a clear strategy makes a company more likely to succeed?” That brave question is stunningly difficult to answer. We’ll try anyway, and end up with a bumper sticker for professional strategists.

In lieu of evidence and a causal theory, I say that if you like to tweet, go ahead and tweet. You don’t need to justify it — and you cannot justify it —any more than you need to justify a preference for cabernet sauvignon over pinot noir.

We’ve run it again: a business war game on the automobile industry. It was to demonstrate war-gaming, not to solve the industry’s problems. That said, it revealed a lot about what goes right and what goes wrong when people develop competitive strategies.

ACS and SCIP Oregon conducted a business war game of the automobile industry. Here’s why, here are lessons from the war game, and here’s what you should do in your own business.

Don’t we all wish that the stress tests of banks had been done, say, a year and a half ago? The case for running our own stress tests on our businesses.

Remember that the tough problem a year ago was where to buy a Nintendo Wii? Thinking about 2008, your next strategy move, and 2009.

Is high executive compensation a problem, or is it high pay for bad performance? The difficulties of regulating compensation, some reasons why good executives go bad, and the need to focus on performance at least as much as on compensation.

You’re no longer a “manufacturer” or “retailer” or “Internet company” or “designer”…unless that’s how you see yourself, in which case make sure that’s a box you want to live in (if you want to live in a box at all).