Shape enterprise direction
Leadership
There is a point in education when the problem changes. At first, the difficulty is not knowing enough. Later, it is having more available knowledge than you can use. Fifty things on the reading list. Several definitions of the same term. Three plausible arguments. Another lecture, another paper, another footnote.
Leadership
Creativity is not freedom from technique. Watch an experienced teacher in a Sassoon cutting class. The student has come to improve her craft, yet remarkably few decisions are hers. The model is chosen. The geometry is agreed. The hair is sectioned. Then, at the first irreversible moment, the teacher makes
Leadership
Great organisations don't scale experts. They scale the accumulated judgement of experts. There is a small detail about Wagamama that explains more about the company than it first appears to. The tables are numbered the same way in every restaurant. A waiter arriving from another branch does not
Leadership
Before judgement can be practised, perception has to be trained. You cannot choose well among differences you cannot yet see. Watch an apprentice tailor and something initially seems backwards. The master makes nearly all the important decisions. He chooses the garment. He marks the cloth. He decides where the buttonholes
Leadership
Success creates opportunities. Leadership curates them. The better an organization becomes, the more possibilities appear. Customers reveal unmet needs. Technology opens new doors. A conversation sparks an unexpected insight. Before long, there is more worth doing than anyone can possibly do well. The best leaders possess two qualities that seem
Leadership
Strategy is less about predicting the future than building an organization that learns faster than the future changes. Most organizations mistake strategy for prediction. They assume the winner will be the one who sees the future most clearly. History rarely belongs to those who wait for certainty. It usually favours
Innovation
"It has been a problem for six months. What's another three?" Organizations scrutinize the cost of acting and largely ignore the cost of waiting. Action carries visible consequences: budgets spent, reputations exposed, decisions attached to names. Delay feels prudent because its costs are dispersed and difficult
Leadership
A child dreams of an Olympic podium. Another, a Nobel Prize. Another, an Oscar. We understand instinctively what precedes such moments: years of practice, failure, repetition, and adaptation. Yet when pursuing our own ambitions, we often imagine progress comes from finding better answers. More often, it comes from asking better
Leadership
The organisations with the strongest data cultures are often the ones talking least about data. Consider an elite athlete. Improvement rarely arrives in dramatic leaps. It begins with a tiny observation: a runner notices she is two seconds slower than yesterday; a swimmer feels slightly more resistance in the water;
Leadership
Most discussions of competitive advantage focus on what a company has. History suggests a different question: What do other companies not yet understand? Advantage comes from asymmetry. Once something is widely recognized as valuable, capital flows in, talent follows, best practices spread, and the advantage begins to disappear. Technology provides
Innovation
Watch what happens in most meetings. The first idea is almost never the best idea. Yet it is often the most important. Not because it is correct. Quite the opposite. It is incomplete. It gives everyone else something to push against. This is one of the peculiar things about how
Leadership
Adding capable people ought to accelerate progress. Yet organisations frequently discover the reverse. The first few hires add momentum. The next few create leverage. Then, almost imperceptibly, a growing proportion of effort is devoted not to the work itself but to explaining, coordinating, negotiating, and administering it. Capability accumulates. Progress