Von Clausewitz summed up what it had all been about in his classic On War. Men could not reduce strategy to a formula. Detailed planning necessarily failed, due to the inevitable frictions encountered: chance events, imperfections in execution, and the independent will of the opposition. Instead, the human elements were paramount: leadership, morale, and the almost instinctive savvy of the best generals. The Prussian general staff, under the elder von Moltke, perfected these concepts in practice. They did not expect a plan of operations to survive beyond the first contact with the enemy. They set only the broadest of objectives and emphasised seizing unforeseen opportunities as they arose. Strategy was not a lengthy action plan. It was the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.
Definitely the best passage from Jack Welch’s mediocre autobiography, Straight from the gut, p.448.
newyorker:
NEW VIDEO: Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks with James Surowiecki about the causes of the 2008 financial crisis and the future of the economy.
Read James Surowiecki’s piece from this week’s issue on the regulation crisis.
reblogged from newyorker
Another brilliant TED talk by Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland.
We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly – or not at all – because of a stifling bureaucracy.
Warren Buffett’s 2009 letter to shareholders (this should be plastered on the wall of every corporate manager)
She was in the conference room, pouring a cup of coffee, when the other company’s executives and lawyers walked in. They proceeded to discuss the lowest bid they would accept, as if she wasn’t there. ‘They assumed I was the admin,’ or secretary, she says. When the group sat down to negotiate, she adds, ‘Their faces went white as ghosts.’
Why So Few Women in Silicon Valley? - NYT (via nickdouglas, fred-wilson, mikehudack)
reblogged from mikehudack
What I could not get my head around was having to force-fit analysis to a conclusion. In one case, the question I was tasked with solving had a clear and unambiguous answer: By my estimate, the client’s plan of action had a net present discounted value of negative one billion dollars. Even after accounting for some degree of error in my reckoning, I could still be sure that theirs was a losing proposition. But the client did not want analysis that contradicted their own, and my manager told me plainly that it was not our place to question what the client wanted.
From this funny story written by a former BCG consultant about his time at the esteemed firm.
A new frugality, characterized by a strong value consciousness that dictates trade-offs in price, brand, and convenience, has become the dominant mind-set among consumers in the United States — and probably in other wealthy countries as well. Two-thirds of American shoppers are cutting coupons more frequently, buying low price over convenience, and emphasizing saving over spending. Per capita consumption expenditure has declined across demographic groups. Consumer sentiment remains weak. These trends are not going to change, no matter the pace of economic change.
‘The New Consumer Frugality’, Booz & Co
Many of the really interesting business models in the new economy use radically different ways of working. Smart businesses increasingly enjoy the flexibility of using the growing number of skilled, talented, experienced individuals who consult, freelance, design, build, develop, project-manage. A model that puts them in the middle of a talent network, without the overhead. Other businesses are turning traditional models on their head by putting themselves at the centre of communities of skilled contributors and advocates formerly known as customers, enabling development cycles that are many times quicker and processes that are many times less capital intensive than industry norms.
‘Agile Planning’ - Neil Perkin
Buffett always likes a sweetener, and Burlington gives him one in the form of information. He learns about wallboard demand from USG and consumer-credit trends from American Express, but Rose has called the railroad a kaleidoscope of the economy. Rail traffic patterns are a window on commodity, wholesale, consumer, and international trade flows. Buffett is adding this kaleidoscope to what his other CEOs tell him about the “reset of the consumer” to a lower level of spending. They feed him data from Berkshire’s portfolio of companies—sales of building materials, jewelry, furniture, real estate, credit, fractional jets, vacuum cleaners, fabricated steel, newspaper ad lineage, and other products and services. He may now command as much information about the state of the U.S. economy as anyone, including the Federal Reserve—and probably gets his faster.
When CEOs Have Warren Buffett in Their Boardroom - BusinessWeek (via rickwebb)
reblogged from rickwebb
Andy sent me a link to Flattr last week. It’s a service that is setting out to revolutionise how people get paid for online content. I’m always pretty suspicious of any startup that claims they are going to ‘revolutionise’ something, but it’s an interesting idea. These were my initial thoughts:
I love the (generally) uncommercial nature of blogs at the moment, and I wonder how this would change people’s behaviour for the worse. I know that I’d get way more donations for posting “10 steps to becoming a power blogger” or uploading a photo with a stupid caption on it in Helvetica, rather than writing something interesting about how people use the internet or what I’m thinking about life. I’d probably rather not have this in the back of my mind when I’m thinking about what to write on, and I’d definitely rather not read blogs for people who are motivated this way.
When I see that bloggers are doing ‘sponsored’ posts or taking money from people like Nuffnang, they immediately lose all credibility in my mind. If we can find time to blog for free just because we enjoy doing it then everyone else can too.
Not sure about the writing and art direction in the explanation video though!
Over the last year or two, we have spent untold hours trying to document how we do things at the company. At first, it was this ridiculous futile exercise in documenting every process step and every decision moment. It was like going into the rabbit hole – deeper and deeper into arcana and control freakiness. Now, I’m thinking more about documenting our philosophies, our approach, and what we believe in. The general guidelines for tackling our problems. The general guidelines for stating what we believe in. I find that many of the challenges in maintaining quality work as you step back are rooted in people not knowing your guiding principles. How many other agencies do this, I wonder? How many agencies can stand up and say exactly what it is they believe in and what they are going for? This is something I think we could all be better at, and those that are successful at it are one more step down the path of successful everlasting agency life, I’ll wager.
“Why agencies need to make star quality routine” by Rick Webb
The engineers and I handle customer support. When I tell people that, they look at me like I’m smoking crack. They say, “Why would you pay an engineer $150,000 to answer phones when you could pay someone in Arizona $8 an hour?” If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they’ll actually stop what they’re doing and fix the code. Then we don’t have those questions anymore.
I really agree with this. It’s potentially an even bigger problem for digital agencies than it is for pure-play product companies - in an agency the developers are often so many layers of account service and client management away from the end customer that they can very easily lose touch with their users’ needs and problems.
The Way I Work: Paul English of Kayak (via soxiam, via superamit, via joshmohrer, via arigreenberg, via mikehudack)
reblogged from mikehudack
In Retrospect - Executives on How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong - NYTimes.com
fluffynotes:
MR. LEVIN I used to think at the time it was a clash of cultures and a misreading of the dot-com bubble, but I now upon reflection believe that the transaction was undone by the Internet itself.
I think it’s something that no one could have foreseen, and to this day, whether Apple is going to dominate entertainment or whether Amazon is going to dominate publishing, all the old business plans are out the window. How do you get paid for content? And the consumer has access to everything and now it’s going to be on a handheld device, so what I call the rolling thunder of the Internet started actually to eat its own, which was AOL. AOL was the Google of its time. It was how you got to the Internet, but it was using some old media business ideas that were undone by the Internet itself, and that’s why Google came along.
MR. PARSONS The business model sort of collapsed under us, and then finally this cultural matter. As I said, it was beyond certainly my abilities to figure out how to blend the old media and the new media culture. They were like different species, and in fact, they were species that were inherently at war.
In Retrospect - Executives on How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong - NYTimes.com
reblogged from fluffynotes
On days when workers have the sense they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest.
Progress, not recognition or incentives, is what really motivates workers. “Breakthrough Ideas for 2010,” Harvard Business Review (via somethingchanged) (via fluffynotes)
reblogged from fluffynotes
