Hi...nice to meet you.
I became a self-employed strategy advisor in my mid-twenties. Sounds cool, doesn't it? Except that it wasn't. I mean…who wants strategy advice from somebody right out of university?
To be honest, I didn't know what I was doing.
I thought I had learned how to do strategy during my business studies, and I was eager to apply all the methodologies, tools, and frameworks. Yet, I quickly discovered that they don't produce good strategies. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't…creating no strategy, bad strategy, and strategies that didn't get implemented.
I came to the conclusion that old school, traditional approaches to strategy don't work.
The first thing missing, and what you learn neither at business school nor from most strategy books, was a step-by-step process to put all these frameworks and methodologies into practice so that they actually help to produce a good strategy.
So, through many years of experimentation, I developed The Strategy Launchpad as a solid approach to designing and executing better strategies.
The second thing missing was innovation; how to put innovation back into strategy to enable you to win, achieve a competitive advantage, and create differentiation.
So, I got a PhD from Manchester Business School, studying successful strategic innovators. Based on my research, I developed The Art of Opportunity framework to create strategic innovation for new growth outside your established core.
The third thing missing was the human side. Developing and executing strategies is a human endeavor, not an analytical, number-crunching exercise. People develop strategies, and people implement strategies…or they don't…if they aren't aligned, committed, or convinced.
So, I studied organizational development, led large-scale change management initiatives for Fortune 500 companies, gained experience with human-centered design, new ways of working, teamwork and group dynamics, facilitation, and how to guide people through the journey from designing strategies to executing them and transforming their organizations.
After 20 years of doing all of this, I synthesized all my strategy, innovation, transformation, and leadership experience and expertise into a holistic, comprehensive, and systematic approach to help my clients – ambitious leaders and entrepreneurs of companies small and large from across industries worldwide – design and execute better strategies.
And finally, in my humble opinion, all of this better strategy work should be in the service of building better businesses – businesses that perform well, make a significant impact, and are more human and engaging places to work.
So…there you have it…if any of this resonates with you, I'd be delighted to talk about how I can support you on your journey to better strategy and better business.
Click here to learn more about how we can work together.
I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
