Tag: Strategy
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Seeking Greatness and the Myth of Objectives
Let’s start with a riddle You’re lost in a labyrinth and you need to get out quickly. It’s a matter of survival. You chance upon two robots in this labyrinth. One robot has the algorithm: “I find novel spaces.” The other robot has the algorithm: “I seek the exit.” Which robot gives you the best…
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Clear Language is the Basis of Strategy – Talk
I recently gave a talk about the connection between language and strategy – effectively, how language is the technology that enables humans to strategise, and here are the slides.
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Language as a basis for strategy
The connection between language and strategy Starting about 300,000 years ago language was used by groups of early human males to overthrow the alpha male of their group. According to Richard Wrangham, a researcher of anthropology, primate groups differ from human groups in that, typically, a group of primates has an alpha male with subordinate males.…
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The East India Company and the Origins of Corporate Risk Taking
The East India Company became one of the largest companies that ever existed and controlled half of all world trade at one point. Its beginnings (and its eventual success) are based on the innovation of risk taking: The company existed for over 400 years and its original intention was to import spices from Indonesia. In 1599, the…
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The Zurich Axioms: A Summary through the Lens of Antifragility
The Zurich Axioms are based on the axioms that Swiss bankers have used to increase and preserve wealth over generations. I decided to look at the axioms through the lens of antifragility and with coaching principles in mind in order to better understand how to apply them. It’s all very well reading the axioms and…
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Strategy = Language + Risk Taking
Starting about 300,000 years ago language was used by a group of early human males to overthrow the alpha male bully. According Richard Wrangham, primate alpha males bully lesser males and get what they want (food, females) through force and bullying. Typically a group of primates has an alpha male with subordinate males. Early humans,…
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‘The Anarchy’ – A Summary of Piracy, Strategy, Tea and the East India Company
I remember once reading in a book where an Indian character says to the other: do you know how the British built their Empire? One teaspoon at a time. I’ve just finished reading the Anarchy by William Dalrymple. The expression is true, it was one tea spoon at a time, but there were a couple…
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Adam Curtis Discussing Risk
I listened to the first half of Adam Curtis being interviewed by Russell Brand. Some interesting insights that caught my ear related to antifragility, change and risk: Through this interpretation, I understand that change and volatility has been suppressed whilst, throughout this time, the systems we live in have become more and more fragile (because…
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Mad Dogs and Beefeaters
Six of us (us two, two Americans, an Australian and a Zimbabwean) were en route from the airport to a B&B in sleepy Wiltshire – close to Bath – for a team meeting. We were picked up from the train station by, interestingly, a South African taxi driver. The South African and the Zimbabwean immediately…
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Personal OKRs and Personal Agility
How on Earth do people get things done? I really don’t know how some people achieve anything in their private lives – myself included. I got so fed up with myself for constantly forgetting things that I needed some way of ‘sorting myself out’, especially at a point in my life when time itself was…