Why on Earth

800,000 subscribers left Netflix after the company raised its prices. That tells us Netflix adopted a bad strategy. Or does it? Fourteen reasons why Netflix was wrong, or not.

When strategists choose bad strategies, strategies fail. That sounds obvious, except no strategist purposely chooses a bad strategy. Strategists are smart, experienced, industry-savvy, data-rich, and highly motivated to succeed. Yet smart strategists can and do choose bad strategies, and bad strategies fail.

Those who are exquisitely aware of the value they bring to decision-making wonder why they struggle to get decision-makers to listen. I have suffered from this. So have you. Pretty much all humans above the age of one know that frustration. Oh when will those decision-makers ever learn?

No stunning message about strategy this time. Just a brief moment of merriment. Hope you enjoy.

In business we expect decisions to come from careful analysis in which experts lay out the options, quantify the costs and benefits, and make the right choices. So it may seem perplexing when two senior executives, in symbiotically linked companies, publicly and decisively disagree on a key decision.

Businesses tend to overtighten. They do it because they’re led there by simple, persuasive logic, which we can boil down to this: it is cheaper to print “do not overtighten” on the instructions than it is to supply products that can withstand formidable strength.

What can we learn about business diagnosis from TV’s nastiest doctor? Quite a bit. We take a look at Safeway and Supervalu pricing on our rounds.

I presume you would like to predict your competitors’ moves better than you do now. Say, for instance, their prices. Let’s work on that, perhaps with a shock as we go along. We structure today’s harangue around a pricing quiz.

Prognosticators would rather be right than wrong. The question remains, why do they (and we) get it wrong? Here are some reasons, and here is a way to distinguish good remedies from bad.

Executive compensation is top-headline news these days. It commands the attention of the President and Congress. It’s an attractive problem, full of righteous indignation, handy villains, and clear action plans. Unfortunately, it’s not the important problem.