Versatile Amphibian

Yesterday’s news cycle brought with it the announcement that Debenhams, a staple of the UK high street, was now in the control of its lenders . This kind of news is sad for the employees of Debenhams and certainly for its shareholders, but it is also a good opportunity for reflection. A business that can trace its history back to 1778 may be about to cease trading forever. For leaders in the retail and associated consumer industries, now is a good time to consider what lessons can be learnt from Debenhams and what could be done to seize the opportunity presented by its passing. I’m thinking about the topic of strategic responses to emerging events at the moment because of the seeming inevitability of a recession this year or next, which will doubtless bring with it many similar situations. Before I get started, a disclaimer. I have no inside knowledge of Debenhams, I have never consulted for them, pitched to them or even met anyone in their management team. This post uses Debenham...

I'm on a bit of a journey right now, the objective of which is to systematise my process for devising strategic concepts to suit all of the situations my clients find them in. To that end, I'm going to share one of the ideas in the book : that we can classify concepts using a matrix of purpose/ intent against nature of response. Like so: Purpose (or intent) is the principal axis of this matrix because it articulates the sentiment behind the organisation’s goals Defensive purpose is most common in that it represents a defence of the oligarchy in order to continue to extract increasing profits from falling utility Offensive purpose is more attractive but also riskier because it represents the taking of value from other sources in the economy through acquisition or aggressive entry into other geographic markets In both purposes one can choose to be orthodox (as stated in the above examples) or unorthodox; for example: To defend by extending ubiquity and thus...

I recently made this graphic for a presentation and thought it was worth sharing as a reminder that for all of the talk of 'exponential technologies' and innovation, most 'digital' businesses are actually quite simple. Leaders are under pressure to do crazy digital things, particularly with respect to technology, and yet I would contend that getting to the best in class technology and operating (organisational etc...) infrastructure for the business model you are currently working with or striving for would be a better basis for lasting growth. Boring as it sounds, that means ERP, WMS systems if you're pre-digital; CRM, CMS at al if you're 1st Wave; event streaming and simulation if you're 2nd Wave... and if you're 3rd Wave you don't need my advice! The other observation I have about this picture is that every wave comes with a deeper, but also leaner and more productive operational stack that benefits it in competition with the previous wave. ...

I find myself consistently interested by the idea that for all the overt recent progress that we’ve experienced we are in fact in a lull, waiting for the next big thing to emerge. That’s made me think about the way in which the digital computing era has evolved over the last fifty years. This post sets out some thinking about how monopolies have formed and been broken in the Digital Economy to date as a precursor to further posts on future strategies and business models. Four great computing platforms The first Intel Microprocessor – the 4004 – was revealed to the world in November 1971. Although at the time few predicted its impact, the 4004 was the Big Bang event that launched the fifth great techno-economic revolution: the era of digital computing. Before the 4004 and the vast range of other microprocessors that followed it, computing power came at far too great a cost and complexity to be readily useful for the majority of everyday use cases. As we approach the fiftieth annive...

When I published my first post on the current and future structure of Executive Leadership Teams (ExCos) I promised that I was in the process of extending the data set to encompass the S&P 500 as well as the FTSE 100. As you can imagine, this is a mammoth undertaking given that my time is restricted to evenings (when not looking after my son), weekends (ditto), the commute and snatched sidebar conversations with colleagues. Nonetheless I am making some progress in my analysis... my data gathering for all companies beginning with 'A' on the S&P 500 are now complete. Rather than wait for all letters to be completed, I thought I'd throw out a few findings and see what you all think of them. So, in no particular order: I was able to look at 63  organisations, although 3 of them declined to publish details of their leadership structure and I was unable to get the information from within my network. One of these, incidentally, is Alphabet... In ...

This is the latest part of my thought experiment on the future of executive teams (ExCos). Thus far I’ve looked at the starting point in FTSE 100 ExCos , at roles that would allow them to defend their position in a Digital Economy, at roles that would enable them to create new growth and latterly at the most likely configuration of roles on the team. In this post I’m going to explore how today’s ExCo can evolve into the future. My conclusion in terms of makeup is that the ExCo should effectively halve in size from today’s average of 10 roles to 5 in the new configuration. Today’s average ExCo consists of: CEO CFO COO CHRO A Geographic Market Leader 2 Market Vertical Leaders CIO or Chief Digital Officer General Counsel CSO Before I talk about the future positions in a fully-installed Digital Economy, I need to do some renaming. Some of you might regard this as an atypical reversion to conventionalism… but it has been pointed out (kindly) that some of this work is ...

I got into a conversation with a few colleagues last month about the thorny issue of ‘AI Strategy’. Turns out that this is now a thing that organisations want. I kind of wonder why they want it if I’m honest, but the customer is always right and all. Anyhow, it got me thinking about who owns AI in a business. So let’s take a break from thinking about executive team roles and think it through.  If you believe the hype then we are entering a phase of the economy in which automation radically changes the nature of work within a generation. AI experts will doubtless splutter at the idea that automation and AI are the same thing. I’m using the former in a more general sense. Artificial intelligence algorithms automate certain classes of decisions that hitherto required a subset of human biology to accomplish. By that definition AI tools are basically the same as other IT tools. An enterprise resource planning or warehouse management system automates administration tasks that a human ...