When the Hewlett-Packard board got rid of former CEO Mark Hurd (using allegations of salacious-sounding but apparently pretty mild impropriety as a cover for pursuing personal feuds), Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, described it as “the worst personnel decision in Read More

Have you ever said one thing, and then done another? Of course! Everyone has at one time or another, and that includes customers, employees, suppliers and peers. It is rarely mendacious, but it happens. Yet when businesses gather information, they Read More

My internet service provider engaged a market research firm to get customer feedback about their help desk. I had recently called the desk twice in two days, the first time receiving – from a UK-based centre – rigid, script-based ‘service’ Read More

Two young fish are out for a swim. An older fish is coming upstream, and asks cheerily: “Morning kids – how’s the water?” One young fish turns to the other: “What the hell is water?” This post deals with simple Read More

by Andrew Bass  |  Blog, Culture, Strategy

In strategic decision making, there is always the temptation to do more analysis in the hope that it will reduce uncertainty. But beyond a certain point, which comes sooner than most people would like, more analysis does not equal more Read More