The ACS Blog

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.

Business war games, in my experience, provide outstanding insights that greatly impact bottom lines. But why? What is it about business war games that produces insights that evidently elude other approaches?

If we ran a survey asking “are you biased?” we would find no one is. Bias is a characteristic of others, not of ourselves. It’s about you, not me. Which is ironic, and the point.

Due diligence may not protect you from frenzies of advocacy. At its worst, it’s like signing an ill-advised legal document because the spell-check said it was okay. Think it doesn’t happen? Remember that no one invests in a strategy or business expecting it to fail, yet somehow smart people invest in strategies and businesses that fail.

Here we’ll look at people who switch, 20% liberals, a tremendous success rate, and customer satisfaction. What does that crowd have in common?

What will you experience in this essay? I don’t know. Different people read the same words and see different stories. Which, actually, is what this essay is about. Which story should we believe? In this case, about the value of hiring CEOs with experience.

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?

An interview with ACS’ Mark Chussil from the Trust Across America blog, where Barbara Brooks Kimmel writes on building great business through trustworthy behavior. The wide-ranging interview ranges from trustworthy business behavior, to the shift from stakeholders to shareholders, to making strategy decisions.

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

How can consumers trust companies to make safe products, and to make products safer? An essay on perceived costs, hidden opportunities, level playing fields, “intangibles,” applying brains, and jerking knees.