Kim Warren on Strategy
Strategy insights and living business models
Re-usable and continuing solutions: Most models are not Kleenex!
A McKinsey expert once told me “A dynamic model is like Kleenex – use it to fix an issue, then throw it away“. Now some digital twin business models are like that, but many, many more are built about issues or plans that continue, recur, or arise in multiple cases. It…
Middle managers get hit again
I see middle managers are getting hit yet again, this time in McKinsey Quarterly as ‘innovation blockers‘. It seems to be forgotten that middle managers have the additional rather boring but important role of actually running the business that generates the cash flow that funds innovation. This is the group…
Don't copy what's not relevant
A nice word of caution from strategy+business magazine about looking for magic strategy answers by peering into the ways of superstars. In The Google Enigma, they point out that ‘Unless your company makes money by selling advertising attached to digital goods, you may not be able to learn much from…
Strategic incompetence continued
… and now we see Merrill Lynch in the same trouble, so perhaps they could answer the same question we put to Citigroup. Meanwhile, here in the UK, we are told that every household in the country is going to have to stump up Stlg 2,000 to prop up another…
Strategic incompetence
Interesting to see that Citigroup may take a further multi-billion dollar hit as a further consequence of the sub-prime lending fiasco. Now nothing makes me angrier than strategic incompetence, not because of the harm it does to investors – they know they are putting their money in the hands of…
Oh no - not 'change' again !
The latest from McKinsey Quarterly is yet another fire-hosing about ‘driving radical change’, ‘transformation without crisis’, etc. etc. Radical change is very rarely needed, most often destructive, and only appropriate in the most dire circumstances – which applies to very few organizations. And don’t come back with ‘Well you’ve got…