“The first aim of business is to avoid making a loss” – Peter Drucker. Here’s one way many firms muddle their way to catastrophe
Have you ever seen this TV show?
Kids love it; but I think it has lessons for people in business.
To explain why, let me start by saying that I have long hated the word strategy and its friend strategic.
If anyone has either word in their title I view them with deep suspicion. What, for instance, is a strategic copywriter? You tell me.
With what pleasure, then, have I been reading Good strategy, Bad strategy by Richard Rumelt. Although unduly larded with business-speak it is full of wisdom and good sense.
To start with it points out that most firms and their bosses don’t even understand what strategy is. They confuse it with implausible objectives, states of mind and all-round wishful thinking. (One chapter demolishes the new-age hocus-pocus that says all you have to do is wish hard enough and your dreams will come true).
But I have long thought that one of the biggest roads to catastrophe is the one called “Let’s have a new strategy”.
Let me explain the disasters this can lead to in a little video called Crossing the Stream
