The one list of 30 aphorisms
Early spring cleaning
Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
In today’s free-for-all edition, we deviate from normal services by listing 30 random aphorisms, insights, truths, and/or brainfarts (you decide).
Also, an update on the last remaining speaking slots for H1, Hindenburg Research’s closure, Elon Musk vs the SEC, Mark Zuckerberg vs public perception, artificial intelligence, and Adobe.
Now accepting keynotes for 25Q2-25Q4
Every year for the last decade or so, I have created three main presentation decks. For 2025, however, I have (for the first time) added a fourth due to popular demand. They are:
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do: How to turn change into a competitive advantage. (Based on the new book by the same name.)
Leadership in a Time of Change: How to steer an organization through a sea of uncertainty.
Resilient Retail: How to build a profitable retail business in the modern marketplace. (Based on the 2025 follow-up to the highly praised 2022 white paper The Gravity of e-Commerce.)
Artificial Intelligence Beyond the Fantasy: How to establish the real-world relevance of a new technology.
If you want to book me for your event, corporate speaking slot, or workshop, merely send me an email. To make sure I am available, please do so at your earliest convenience; my availability is limited and the schedule tends to fill up fast. More information may be found here.
A couple of schedule updates before we go-go
Only a quick couple of points regarding my H1 itinerary today:
In February, I will only be traveling domestically. There are no available speaking slots.
During the first week of March, I will be doing two talks in the UK (Hertfordshire, London).
During the last week of March, I will be doing one talk in the US (Austin).
For both the UK and US visits, I could potentially squeeze more talks in (likely one for each) should you wish to seize the opportunity while I am local anyway. However, since all the surrounding details (travel, hotel, etc.) are either already set or being set, you need to let me know as soon as humanly possible.
Due to an event cancellation for me and change of travel plans for my wife, April is now fully open.
Moving on to markets.
The market vitals
Hindenburg Research, the short seller that Scott Galloway once dubbed an example of “good capitalism”, is soon no more. Founder Nate Anderson announced the decision in a recent email, writing that “there [was] not one specific thing - no particular threat, no health issue, and no big personal issue” that preceded the move. Whether that is true will probably become public knowledge in due time.
Anderson also announced that every aspect of Hindenburg’s model (and investigative process) will become open-source over the next six months. For anyone doing strategic analysis, particularly involving financial aspects (which most serious analyses should), it will likely be worth looking at.
The SEC is once again suing Elon Musk over his Twitter purchase. According to the regulator, Musk “failed to timely file with the SEC a beneficial ownership report disclosing his acquisition of more than five percent of the outstanding shares of Twitter’s common stock in March 2022, in violation of the federal securities laws”. Translated to the common tongue, it means that by not revealing his purchase, the billionaire received a significant (allegedly $150M) benefit once investors realized he had built a stake.
Speaking of wealthy boys on the spectrum, Mark Zuckerberg is currently ramping up his efforts to suck up to Donald Trump and his sycophants. Whether it is anything more than an attempt to save Meta from lawsuits and breakups remains to be seen, but the visits to Mar-a-Lago (two in the last seven weeks), unceremonious chucking out of longstanding diversity policies, and appearances on Joe Rogan’s podcast to talk about the “emasculating” effects of Biden’s presidency, collectively constitute a blatant repositioning towards MAGA.
Without going into a War and Peace length rant, I find sophomoric views such as his second to none in the dark art of boring you breathless.
For one, the takes on masculinity presented by “the real Mark” (the “Brazilian jiujutsu version” according to the man himself; arguably the most straightforward case of overcompensation in recent memory) are utterly infantile. Being an asshole is not being a man, it is just being mean.
I am known for my candor and high demands in professional situations. But neither is about masculinity, nor are they universals. The default is always to act like a gentleman, not a cave man.
Finally, employees respond to the management’s leadership style. If you are the kind of leader who believes that strength lies in not allowing failure, not tolerating uncertainty, and not hesitating to let go of underachievers or under performers, then you are guaranteeing that you will never get the full story, the accurate picture, or the complete range of possibilities at your company’s disposal. Everyone games the system. Being a corporate dictator ensures that they do so to survive, not thrive. The implications for innovation, risk management, and decision-making, are as massive as they are obvious.
Although we are at what one might call a teenage stage of artificial intelligence (people are claiming that they are doing a lot more than they are actually doing), a number of patterns are beginning to emerge. The most important thus far has been the power of the new technology to raise the average.
To illustrate, if you know nothing of digital design or photo editing, AI can get you to a point far above your previous skill ceiling. Will it be on par with what the best human beings can do? No. Not yet anyway. But it will dramatically improve the work of those below the current average. Thus, the new average (and subsequent demands) will be higher.
For Adobe - the leading provider of software for creative professionals in design, video editing, and digital advertising - the new solutions threaten the core offering. The company’s response has been to add new AI features themselves, but so far the market has been unimpressed. Adobe’s stock price has declined by 30% over the past year as investors have been skeptical about the company’s ability to monetize the new features and stave off potential disruption from start-up competitors.
Whether Adobe turns out to be an AI winner in the long-run, I do not know. It is far from impossible. But my experience tells me that when the CEO publicly states that competitors are not competitors but “partners”, it is a massive red flag. I have been down that road with client executives before and it never ends well.
Moving on.
Aphorisms
30 human truths from the world of strategic management
When I started this endeavor, now almost four years ago, my ambition was singular: I wanted an outlet in which I could share my thoughts completely unfiltered and uncensored, free from editors whose hands were bound by the corporate rope or governed by their own agendas. If I were to be slightly self-critical, however, I do not think that I have done enough with the opportunity.
Do not get me wrong. I am proud of what we have covered in the hundreds of newsletters that have gone out, most of which have dealt with the real-life challenges of business strategy, and Strategy in Praxis’ position as now one of the top weekly reads available in the field. But I think that we can take things significantly further. I just need to figure out how.
There is no doubt in my mind that adaptive strategy could be - should be - the next strategic paradigm. None. The ways of old, however they are manifested in the new, are fatally flawed a priori. There are easily found, easily substantiated, easily demonstrated reasons why practically all of the things that we are told to do by professors, authors, gurus, bosses and know-it-all coworkers end up failing. And I am more than happy to share them, as am I to share what one may do instead.
But I have also become aware that my work is currently being, shall we say, liberally borrowed from without credit by universities and consultancies alike. The question thus becomes whether I share everything everywhere all at once, continue on the current path, or set off on a new one altogether.
The answer that I have come to is that the deep dives into adaptive strategy will, at least until the book comes out, be reserved for premium subscribers. For the once-a-month free editions such as the one you are currently reading, I will instead focus on topics that emerge in the preceding weeks. Mainly, this enables me to discuss important matters with a degree of flexibility, but it also allows me to stay sane.
And so, today, we are going to do something slightly different: I am going take inspiration from Carlos Gershenson and do a bit of far too early spring cleaning.
Below are 30 aphorisms, insights, human truths, bon mots, brainfarts, or potential nonsenses, that I for whatever reason cannot seem to place anywhere else. Feel entirely free to disagree with or ignore them. Although the words are based on experience, it is my experience, and such things differ. I am also fully aware that the list may be entirely banal. But nonetheless, here it is.
Relying too much on one strategic framework is akin to staring at the backside of one’s hand. You will see only your knuckles, whoever is in front of you will see only your palm, and both will miss the rest of the body.
The driving force behind a vast number of business decisions is ego; strategic leaders habitually choose courses of action that will make them look good rather than their companies money.
Most management theory is self-evidently skewed to benefit consultants, not companies.
One should never cast questioning aside because it threatens comfort. Critical enquiry has to be faced, not banished in favor of that more uplifting; inevitably the bad news will arrive anyway, and in the meantime, we fool ourselves.
Founders frequently forget that employees do not care as much as they do. A baby to its parents is just a kid to others.
Performance measurement, particularly in strategy, is a paradox unto itself: the firm needs measures to rely on, but cannot rely on measures.
As far possible, make sure that your strategic decisions are etched in mud rather than set in stone. Things change.
The burden of proof is on the party that makes the claim, not that which receives it. Furthermore, as Hitchen’s razor stipulates, what can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. And while extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, it is extraordinary how many claims in business discourse do not even have ordinary evidence.
Strategic planning begins with the world as it ought to be. Adaptive strategy begins with the world as it is.
The main problem with cascading strategy and its supporting management systems is that it very easily leads to a situation whereby firms paint themselves into an ever smaller corner with an ever larger brush.
The challenge with people who have a surface level understanding is with their verbal appearances; they know the words, but do not grasp the language.
The opposite of a good idea can be another good idea, but the opposite of a bad idea can also be another bad idea.
In strategy, position is less important than disposition.
Culture is an immensely complex phenomenon that most organizations attempt to reduce to platitudes on first days and cupcakes on Fridays.
In practice, planning for change rarely equates to more than a changing of plans.
Most who comment upon the (un)likelihood of a successful company making it through decades by merely being lucky fail to consider the odds of their own existence. Relatively speaking, across a large enough sample, is not just feasible but probable.
Most companies make it not because of their competencies, but despite their incompetencies.
Managers regularly keep organizational blemishes so that they may be blamed for larger defects.
Upon closer inspection, many influential thinkers in business discourse are revealed to only truly possess one trait par excellence: shoehorning capabilities of Cinderellian standards. The result is an intellectual shit show of the absolute highest order; a masterclass in the feculent arts.
If markets are complex adaptive systems, which they provably are, and they keep changing, which they provably do, teaching based on reductive case studies of one guarantees strategic insights that per definition are non-transferrable and outdated. Few business schools have figured this out.
Humanity is such that we accept that we do things by accident, but assume that others do things deliberately; we judge ourselves based on our intentions and everyone else on their behavior.
The one thing above all else that a great strategist should know is that they cannot know everything. They should know that they, and others, will make mistakes, but also therefore to leave a way to correct them.
The challenge with emergence to those in an organizational hierarchy who do not understand the phenomenon is, as Gary Rivers once put it, that what looks like evidence on one scale, looks like noise on another.
Few strategists take individual capability to act into account. Even fewer take individual willingness to act into account.
Executives see the forest, but not the trees. Employees see the trees, but not the forest.
A pivot rarely means anything other than a move to a space where competitors already know what they are doing.
For some reason, we seem to like our failures to be multiple in nature and our successes to be singular in nature. In reality, however, firms can fail in many, many ways, but also succeed in many, many ways.
Strategic management is the management of tensions; between the understandable present and unknowable future; between requisite efficiency and requisite inefficiency; between robustness and resilience; between exploitation and exploration; between predictability and adaptability.
The irony of conventional economic (and by extension business) thought is that it took the ideas of the anti-theist enlightenment and treated them as faith.
Almost all strategic problems change over time, which means that time looking for a solution is often time better spent learning to adapt.
And, well, that was it. Next time, things will revert back to normal for premium subscribers with a meaty edition on the first step of ABCDE implementation. Until then, have the loveliest of weekends.
Onwards and ever upwards,
JP
Great list of aphorisms. A whole string of thoughts waiting to be expanded, if you so desired. And this: "The default is always to act like a gentleman, not a cave man." I hope the world will soon get over the whole "masculinity" thing. But I'm not holding my breath.