Business Strategy Archives

Most Stress Comes from Re-deciding The Same Things under Pressure

By the end of January, you may be feeling one of two things. Either: over-planned and slightly boxed in, or under-planned and quietly uneasy Neither...

Choosing Less Is a Strategic Skill

Steve Jobs is mostly remembered for what he built, and likely much less so for what he deliberately killed. When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the...

Planning From Reality, Not Hope

Last week, I talked about why January isn’t really about goals; it’s about filters. This week is about how to build those filters properly, without...

What Actually Matters This Year

And so, at 10am on the first Monday of the year, Manchester United sacked Ruben Amorim. Another manager gone, As a long-suffering United fan, I’d...

Start the Year by Deciding Less

I wrote a weekly newsletter in 2025; it wasn’t about doing more, but about seeing more clearly. Seeing: where tolerance has crept in where effort...

What to Think About When You’re Finally Not Working

No single season destroyed United. Simply speaking: Tolerance is drift and drift becomes decline.

The Business Case for Letting Go

No single season destroyed United. Simply speaking: Tolerance is drift and drift becomes decline.

Tolerating things until they become the new normal

No single season destroyed United. Simply speaking: Tolerance is drift and drift becomes decline.

December Is the Real New Year

And so we have entered December, most of us are preparing for a break from work and some rest time with family and friends. I am reminded how a...

How you make pay decisions without guilt, fear, or guesswork

Last week, I talked about why people go the extra mile, and why the things that make a team fight for the cause rarely come down to money alone. ...

The Secret Behind Teams That Outperform Their Pay Grade

“People work for money but go the extra mile for recognition, praise, and trust.” — Dale Carnegie As World Cup 2026 qualifying started to really...

The True Cost of a Bad Hire (and Why It’s Always More Than You Think)

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.” — Red Adair My Bad Hire Story A few years ago, I made what...

Let’s Keep Moving

We moved house this week, and it genuinely felt like more than just geography. It was a message to ourselves. The boxes are still half-packed, and...

A Halloween Story About Black Swans

Happy Halloween! We will be enjoying a Halloween tradition in our house, with wine, snacks and finding the cheesiest and worst scary movies we...

A Cash Guide for a Good Night’s Sleep

“Cash… is like oxygen — you don’t notice it until it’s gone.” Warren Buffett Before I talk about the cash in your business, I want to first talk...

Your Business Can’t Scale While You Email

You may have heard me speaking of this before, but a few years ago, I hit a wall. It was summer of 2018. We had been in Portugal for two years, the...

Structure Without Suffocating Spirit

As I have watched Manchester United consistently drop in standards over the past decade, it has unfortunately also coincided with a period of almost...

Margins Shrinking? This Is Your Easiest Fix

Margins don’t often vanish overnight. Instead they are allowed to slowly shrink away, eaten up by rising salaries, creeping software costs, and the...

The Hidden Cost of Saying Yes

Uber was the ultimate growth story. In less than a decade, the company expanded into more than 80 countries, raised billions in funding, and became...

Always being right is so wrong

In the early '90s, George Michael filed a legal case against Sony, arguing his recording contract amounted to “professional slavery.” He claimed it...

When Disaster Strikes: 3 Steps to Recovery

We all hope it won’t happen, but in your business, disaster will hit eventually. The events of March 2020, Covid-19 and global lockdown are still...

Back to School on the Impossible

I subscribe to Hubspot’s daily Hustle newsletter. If you are not familiar with it, it’s a simple daily news format and a nice way to digest what is...