Once upon a time, a supplier to Toyota messed up a shipment. Toyota sent a sensei to find out why. In preparation for the meeting with their biggest customer, a crisis management group from the supplier prepared a detailed root cause analysis of what had gone wrong. They met the sensei at the entrance to their manufacturing plant. He b...

They want a wilderness with a map – but how about errors that give a new start? – or leaves that are edging into the light? — or the many places a road can’t find? — William Stafford, “A Course in Creative Writing,“ in A Glass Face in the Rain, page 65 Managers insist on a map. The more precisely drawn the better. Even if it's a false ...

If you want to build your personal brand, read the Fast Company article about Tom Peters' approach. Peters has shaped my thinking since the beginning of my career. His advice for building your personal brand is great. I put a paraphrase after each point: 1) Prioritize continued education. Leaders learn daily. Leaders are readers. 2) Se...

Entrepreneneurs/Intrapreneurs all share two characteristics: reject + build 1) They reject some status quo. 2) They build something better than or different from the status quo that they reject. Donut (0,0) = person who accepts the status quo and does nothing at all. Doer (0, 1..∞) = person who accepts the status quo and builds. This p...

Technology is anything made by a human to solve a problem. Narrative is made by a human to solve a problem. Q.E.D. Narrative is technology. What problem does narrative solve? It actually solves two problems. 1) It answers Why? Narrative connects dots. It explains beginning, middle, and end. 2) Narrative touches our emotions; it soothes...

Strategy is the decision we make in the present — based on learning from the past — about how to grow or defend in the future. Studying the David and Goliath story in the Bible and the endlessly repeated versions of the story through the ages can teach you how to compete today. It will teach you more about asymmetrical warfare and how ...

Human flourishing should be the first lesson you learn on your first day at business school. And, it should be repeated until the very last lecture. If that's not what you're being taught, why are you there? What of lasting value is the school offering you? Surround yourself with teachers and colleagues who share your values. People wh...

My approach to learning and teaching is to follow an intentionally non-linear path. To seek for weak signals. To make odd connections. And to go to places that are as different/different as possible from what I teach: entrepreneurship & new venture strategy. Students can get the conventional approach to business strategy from text book...

I have almost no intellectual base in military science or intelligence. But I study them to improve my teaching about entrepreneurship. There are two primary reasons: 1) Much basic science, technological R&D, and innovation is done in service of war and national security. (Was the wheel developed to move troops and materiel or was it a...

Gino LaPaglia’s book, The Cultural Roots of Strategic Intelligence popped up when I ran a search for “thick face, black heart.” I ordered it as soon as I read the summary, the epigraph, the chapter titles, and two sentences in the preface! At many things, of wonders and terrors we are awestruck But nothing more than man, cleverest of a...

Ever since John von Neumann, if not before, strategy has been in the grips of game theory and probability. In business, we layer on economics and engineering principles. Those are powerful tools to use in supporting and evaluating new ventures. BUT They are not how strategy is formulated. For that, we have to turn to look elsewhere: th...

More snow fell last night. I got up early. It was still dark and outside it was 10°F. I needed to shovel a portion of the driveway. But I didn’t want to go to the trouble of gassing up my Toro snowblower. That would require trudging to the garage. Taking off my gloves in the bitter cold. Pouring the gas into the tank without spilling i...

How do you balance the tension between maintaining order and releasing creativity? "We are in charge of maintaining institutional, moral, and intellectual order in places brimming with the energies of creative spirit." Eugene Peterson As institutional leaders we manage chaos and maintain order. That’s how we ensure incremental, healthy...

We cannot nurture the life of a start up while holding a stopwatch. Entrepreneurship, at the early stage, is fundamentally creative work. If this is so, if we in fact believe that it is a generative act, then we must not at the same time act like efficiency experts when leading or investing in a startup. We should not apply time manage...

I like the Kansas City Chiefs. I’m from Missouri. Many of my cousins live in Kansas City. I predicted that the Chiefs would win the Super Bowl. I was wrong! Wildly wrong: Kansas City Chiefs 9 - Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31. The question is why? What can I learn by doing an after action review? Individuals and teams that practice regular and...

Imagine a better world. That's what entrepreneurs do. Eugene Peterson writes, A major and too-little remarked evil in our time is the systemic degradation of the imagination. When the imagination is healthy and energetic, it ushers us into…wonder. Most of what is served up today as the fruit of imagination is, in fact, the debasing of ...

What’s the opportunity? During VUCA times managers can be tempted to retreat into a defensive posture. Entrepreneurs behave differently. They ask, “What’s the opportunity?” When they see the way to win, they seize it. What opportunities do you see? What are you doing to seize them?

Every startup is a story. How will yours be told? It starts with a story you tell yourself. Not a once-upon-a-time story. An imagine a world story. A future story. The story sparks products and services into life. New ventures and businesses leap into being. You tell it to prospective customers, colleagues, investors. They add to and s...

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. --Rudyard Kipling If you are trying to formulate strategy for your business or for your life, the six questions from Kipling's poem are still the best tools to use. Specifically, they are the best tools for novice...

Story science is a powerful way to accelerate your business or your career. Angus Fletcher at the Ohio State University's Project Narrative and I have teamed up to apply his groundbreaking work on story science to the realm of business. Today, I'm going to show you one formula derived from the research: three lines to reshape your traj...

“So, I have this goal; I have this goal to obsolete Harvard Business School.” Duke Stump, Bonfire With Soul I agree with Duke wholeheartedly. Well, not quite. I don’t want to obsolete HBS or ChicagoBooth or any other business school. Instead, I imagine a world in which business schools reform themselves and lead the way for human flour...

We’ve been taught to see business through an economic lens. We’ve been trained to build businesses using engineering principles. Both disciplines can be useful. I've learned much from both. But they miss something important; something that holds the clue to finding and building better businesses. That’s because business is fundamentall...

I’m working on a book. Since I’m an entrepreneur and teach entrepreneurship, I decided to think of the book like creating a software product. Part of that involves regular releases of small but working “lines of code.“ I’ve been putting bits and pieces into Twitter, LinkedIn, and emails. But that’s been too limiting. I knew it was time...

What is the purpose of a business? Milton Friedman famously said, “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” This has evolved into the dictum, “The purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value.” Peter Drucker countered, “Business is an organ of society…There is only one valid definition of business pu...