Photo by Arseny Togulev on Unsplash Max, the CEO, shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t commit to this spending now” he said. He faced his CFO and CTO, who were urging him to replace the old mainframe computer and adopt the recommended SaaS program that would integrate all function data within the national logistics business. “The board […]
Photo by Will Suddreth on Unsplash Case 1 Max is the CEO of a mid-size engineering company. He’d just attended a conference of engineers examining the future of fabrication. He was brimming with ideas. Calling a meeting of his direct reports on his return, he required them to come up with a plan to reduce costs by 20%, […]
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Really? It doesn’t have to be broken to become redundant. It reminds me of the book title “What got you here, won’t get you there”. The longer an enterprise enjoys success increases their potential for failure. That’s what the evidence shows. Why? […]
George (name changed), the CEO of one of our clients, rang me and said “David, we’ve got a problem”. Turns out that two of five direct reports to George were proving to be the wrong fit. They were causing disengagement of talent in their teams and weren’t collaborating with the other three peers, an essential […]
There are many talented leaders out there who are severely limited by their unhealthy ego. Here are the top three causes of that unhealthy ego: Fear They fear being wrong; being ‘found out’; losing their illusion of control; losing their position. They often disguise it with expressions like ‘I’m concerned’; ‘I don’t like’; ‘not right […]
Whether you know it or not, your business is headed for disruption, either from the outside or better still, from the inside. Here’s what you can do right now to make disruption work for the business: Get absolute clarity about the one thing your business offers the market, that no one else can or does. […]
People ask their leaders for certainty, even when the evidence is that certainty is a rarity. Think of the experts who predicted that Trump couldn’t win. It is likely that most of our predictions will be wrong in some way, sometimes significantly. How then can we as leaders move forward into an unknown, unreliable future, […]
After five years as CFO Gary was promoted to CEO of the logistics company, whose long term competitive edge was document and parcel delivery within 24 hours nationwide to capital cities and within two days to regional cities. They were being challenged now by growing electronic document transmission and democratised parcel delivery. Gary’s charter was […]
We live in disruptive times, don’t we? The great have fallen and the many small have disappeared before they were even noticed. Memories of Kodak, Enron, Pan Am, Blockbuster Video and Nokia remain with us. Start-ups have become global leaders and disrupters inside a decade. Facebook, Ali Baba, LinkedIn in the digital world and Uber […]
