The Strategy Blog.
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The weird way to succeed at networking
Two ways to succeed at networking. Some of us are naturals at networking. Given a luke warm glass of indifferent white wine and some limp crisps those lucky people circulate at room like honey bees in search of nectar. Two hours later they are the last to leave (undoubtedly to…
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No more standing by #pressforprogress
For IWD 2018 make a pledge. No more standing by. Let’s talk about bravery. Not mountain climbing. Not parachuting out of a plane. Not bungee jumping, abseiling, marathon running, Tough Mudder or Iron Man training. All of which are admirable. I’d like to talk about everyday bravery. The bravery never…
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The most important thing to focus on when you create content
11 hours of media consumption in 8 hours of time. This is not a creative endeavour; it is a race for attention This is how Jez Nelson, ceo of Somethin Else, describes the content development and audience generating business he’s in. I think it is a good description of the…
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What you need for next level leadership
A recent brief for a talk at a conference about leadership ran as follows: “We want the delegates to understand that what’s got them to the senior level that they are at now, isn’t enough to take them to the next level of business leadership”. What’s necessary for the next…
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Respect is more important than a title
“Any fool can buy a car, but you can’t buy respect”. “free fall”, Robert Crais You can’t buy respect. You have to earn it. There’s some jobs where hierarchy and status mean that everyone below you more or less does as you tell them. I imagine the armed forces work…
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Advertising and marketing don’t feature as career choices for kids
At the centenary of suffrage for some women in the UK, a report reveals that girls as young as 7 think women less smart than men. A recent report on the career aspirations of 7-11 year olds has concluded that from a very young age most children stereotype jobs according…
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Leaders have one job
How many voices do you need for great leadership? Writer and leadership coach, Amy Jen Su wrote in Harvard Business Review earlier this year that you need to cultivate many different leadership voices rather than simply focussing on trying to appear confident. She lists five different voices that she says…
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How “path dependence” can help and also prevent progress
Path dependence is our business. Path dependence can break our business. The qwerty keyboard doesn’t make much sense. It did once, it was designed to make typing easier. When typewriters were manual, typing was limited largely to professional typists who used all their fingers for touch typing. Mad Men depicted…
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How to get better ideas
Better ideas Creative problem solving is crucial to everyone’s job now. Innovation is part of the day job. Sometimes that means doing new things in new ways. Sometimes that means new things in old ways or old things in new ways. There’s two dominant schools of thought on innovation in…
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Interrogate the evidence
In 1963 the “Profumo Affair” shook the nation. Government minister John Profumo had been accused of “improper conduct”, ie sleeping with a model named Christine Keeler, who simultaneously was also said to be in a relationship with a Soviet diplomat at the height of the Cold War. The press ran…
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Are you feeling positive about 2018?
A small poll of business leaders gives mixed results. With Brexit consequences looming and uncertain negotiations on the horizon there is much insecurity and business leaders don’t like too many variables and the uncertainty that follows. David Wilding of Twitter was out talking to media and agency heads as 2017 wrapped…
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Getting a competitive edge from Artificial Intelligence may require restructure
84% businesses say that AI will give them competitive advantage. 23% say that they’ve currently incorporated it in their processes or service offerings today. These stats come from Diane Black, Director at E&Y, speaking at Datatech’s conference last month. Two points arise from this. First that the potential of AI…
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