Winning Moves Blog

An article in the Wall Street Journal Magazine (Soapbox The Columnist feature, July/August 2013) offered advice from six individuals whose work entails considerable risk. These six individuals participate(d) in risky activities such reporting on wars, investigating infectious disease in the jungle, climbing Mount Everest, and winning an Olympic skiing medal. Only one of the six was in business, successfully founding restaurants, an endeavor for which the risk of failure is high. According to my research, many of the same principles Continue reading “Taking Successful Strategic Business Risks Parallels Lessons from Risky Work” »

I’ve said in my previous writing that brainstorming does not drive successful innovation. This is the case because success does not come from generating the wildest ideas. According to my 25+ years researching business success and failure patterns, innovation success results from selectively pursuing the right ideas, generally ideas that evolve from your existing strengths. A new book related to this, Continue reading “Think Inside the Box Beats Brainstorming’s Wild Ideas” »

Bloomberg Businessweek recently (April 15-21, 2013) featured several brief how-to articles on a variety of subjects. One of them, was “How to Reinvent a Brand” as told to Susan Berfield by Lew Frankfort, CEO of Coach, a company that went from a $550 million business to $5 billion in about a decade.

Short but valuable, the article includes what my 25+ years of research into business success and failure patterns finds is one of the most–if not the most–important Continue reading “Avoid the Fatal Error: a Key How-To Rule for Reinventing Your Brand” »

The recent turmoil at Penney’s illustrates the challenges of transformational change. And, when transformational change goes awry, merely halting the bold moves and attempting to reverse the damage does not eliminate the challenges. At Penney’s, challenges remain even after ousting its CEO, former Apple executive Ron Johnson, who was hired to bring about transformational change. So, now what for Penney’s? Continue reading “Stop the Transformational Change–It’s Too Bold for Penney’s, but Now What?” »

The March 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review described a research study which found that CEOs who have been in their jobs for more than five years perform more poorly than those whose tenure has not yet reached the five year mark. The article, “Long CEO Tenure Can Hurt Performance” by Xueming Luo, Vamsi K. Kanuri, and Michelle Andrews, explains that Continue reading “CEO Tenure: How Data Can Be Misleading” »