Jan 28Member-onlyStrategy Without Purpose Will Always FailIn 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama published an essay in the journal The National Interest titled The End of History, which led to a bestselling book. …Strategy6 min readStrategy6 min read
Jan 21Member-onlyWhy Unlearning Is At Least As Important As LearningWhen I first went overseas to Poland in 1997, I thought I knew how the media business worked. I had some experience selling national radio time in New York and thought I could teach the Poles who, after 50 years of communism, hadn’t had much opportunity to learn how a…Learning6 min readLearning6 min read
Jan 14Member-onlyThe 7 Greatest Ideas in HistoryWe all have ideas all the time. Some are good, but rather ordinary, (like spontaneously buying flowers for your wife on the way home), some are bad (like buying her a knife set for her birthday) and others, like Google’s PageRank are unquestionably great. Just a few stand out above…Ideas7 min readIdeas7 min read
Dec 17, 2022Member-onlyThe 2022 Digital Tonto Reading List“Don’t believe everything you think” has become something of a mantra of mine. It’s a simple idea, but desperately hard to accomplish. …Readinglist5 min readReadinglist5 min read
Dec 3, 2022Member-onlyThis One Simple Scientific Principle Explains Why You Shouldn’t Waste Too Much Time Trying To Convince PeopleExperts have a lot of ideas about persuasion. Some suggest leveraging social proof, to show that people have adopted the idea and had a positive experience. Others emphasize the importance of building trust and using emotional rather than analytical arguments. Still others insist on creating a unified value proposition. These…Persuasion6 min readPersuasion6 min read
Nov 26, 2022Member-onlySchwerpunkt: The Killer Strategic Concept You’ve Never Heard Of (But Really Need To Know!)When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, his first mission was not to create but destroy. He axed a number of failing products and initiatives, such as the ill-fated Newton personal digital assistant and the Macintosh clones. …Strategy6 min readStrategy6 min read
Nov 19, 2022Member-only3 Reasons Why Business Thinking Is So Consistently Shoddy“The single most important message in this book is very simple,” reads the first line in John Kotter’s highly regarded The Heart of Change. “People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings. …Cognitive Bias6 min readCognitive Bias6 min read
Nov 12, 2022Member-onlyChange Isn’t About Persuasion. It’s About PowerThe greatest misconception about change is that it’s about persuasion. All too often, we think that once people understand our idea, they will embrace it. Nothing can be further from the truth. …Change5 min readChange5 min read
Nov 5, 2022Member-onlyWhy We’re Better Off Assuming People Are Competent And HardworkingGo to just about any business conference these days and you’re likely to see some pundit on stage telling a story about a company — often Blockbuster, Kodak or Xerox — that got blindsided by nascent trends. …Leadership6 min readLeadership6 min read
Oct 29, 2022Member-onlyWe Need To Get Back To Counting What Counts“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted,” is a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein, which I think aptly sums up the past 40 years. Since the 80s, we’ve been laser-focused on numbers and missed the underlying math. …Economics6 min readEconomics6 min read