A note to the reader

If you do not want to get challenged, this is not the newsletter for you.

I know. Believe you me, I know.

There are, clearly, far too many newsletters already. Far too many commentators making far too similar observations about far too comparable phenomena, doing little more than enforcing the comfortable status quo. It is, after all, understandable. Most of us find cognitive dissonance to be a pain in the proverbial posterior. Much nicer to time-and-again have one’s beliefs confirmed.

But lost in the non-existent fray is the unfortunate truth that it renders progress barely different from inertia. If we are not challenged - indeed, if we do not challenge ourselves - improvement becomes little more than a Harvard Business Review article about self-help.

And when it comes to strategy, it seems rather clear that we are not improving. If anything, we appear to be going backwards. Which, I suppose, might be considered somewhat fitting given that most of our understanding of what strategy is largely comes out of provably outdated bodies of knowledge.

In this newsletter, rated by many practitioners as the must-read weekly strategy digest, I attempt to go in the opposite direction.

This will include in-depth, honest conversations about:

• strategy in theory and practice,

• applied complexity theory,

• modern management discourse,

• markets,

• firms, and

• people.

It will also be written under the presumption that you are an intelligent human being, capable of thinking for yourself and comfortable being challenged.

If you are not, Strategy in Praxis will not be the newsletter for you. But hey, at least there are many, many more to choose from.

A couple of analyzes to whet your appetite

On Stephen Bungay’s strategic intent

On Richard Rumelt’s guiding policy

On Roger Martin’s Where to Play/How to Win

On missioning and visioning

Regarding subscriptions

By some distance, most of what I put out (he wrote, trying desperately to avoid using the term ‘the content that I create’) is free to read, share, comment upon, praise or trash. It is only every blue moon that I write something for paying subscribers only. Although this means I do put a fair bit of effort into those pieces, I devote plenty of time to every bit of writing I produce. Non-paying subscribers get the ice-cream, the banana, the whipped cream and the chocolate sauce. Paying subscribers get the cherry and the sprinkles.

In other words, more than anything, by choosing to pay you are showing that you appreciate what I do. But while I am thankful for all subscribers - and I genuinely mean that - I am also an independent consultant with a newborn child. Thus, to all of you who have chosen to spend any amount of your hard-earned luca on me, know that it makes a real difference. Not just to me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.