Business Strategy

In my last post, I discussed what makes a good long-term partnership work. In this one I will look at the more fundamental question, “Why partner in the first place?”

The world is a big place. The amount of information available is growing rapidly. It’s become impossible for one organization to be an expert in everything. Even the largest companies have come to this realization.

For smaller companies partnering may be essential. It may be very difficult for a small company to provide enough breadth (skills and experience) to go against larger companies for big contracts. In many cases, if you […]

It sounds like a bit of a cliché, but in reality a good business partnership is a lot like a good marriage. This applies to individuals in a single business or one or more businesses partnering in the marketplace.

Since people have a propensity to look at the world through a "What's in it for me?" lens, this is also how most partnerships end up working.

In marriage, if you have a "What's in it for me attitude?" then I would suggest your marriage is doomed from the get go. Sure you need to get something from it, but the marriages […]

Longer term business planning (strategic planning) is something that tends to easily get pushed aside by the realities of running the day to day aspects of a business. Three scenarios come to mind:

1. When things are good you are so busy keeping up with customer demands and delivering on promises that planning for the future just doesn't seem important. Hey, "you are now successful and you've "arrived" at the end". 

2. When you are just starting up (assuming you don't have infinitely deep pockets) or if you've hit a bump, then you are focused on cash flow issues and it becomes hard to see past […]

The human brain is quite remarkable. They are all similar and so different at the same time, so complex and so simple.

I think I mentioned that I play the fiddle in an earlier post. Today I was sitting in my office humming a tune over and over. You know how it is, you hear something catchy and then it sticks in your head. Well in this case it was a tune called "Forgetting the Lesson" that I had heard a couple of times at a session, but not recently.

Thing is, my brain memorized it. I didn't spend any effort […]

Watching the political race in both Canada and the US is a sad thing.

All the parties basically try to put each other down. They go way back in history and try to dig up any dirt that can be thrown around… mudslinging. This happens all the time but is heightened during the campaigns.

Over the short-term a scandal or negative campaigning can have the desired effect of making you seem better than your opponent, supposing you are actually cleaner. Hey, they are much worse than me!

Have you ever noticed that in a mud fight, everyone gets covered in mud! 

At the end […]

From the previous post I did on Investment Risk one might conclude that it’s best to invest all your efforts in one venture, one big potential payoff. But there is risk to having all your eggs in one basket… what happens if the basket drops?

A number of years back I read a good book on investing and in it they covered investment diversity. Basically the premise is that you should find and invest in good companies with solid management teams. Finding these companies requires time and effort. But after finding them, the work doesn’t end there. You need to […]