5 Reasons Why Every Company Needs a Cybersecurity Strategy

It happened on Saturday, 14 November 2015: unknown hackers accessed the app store database of VTech, a global supplier of electronic learning products with headquarters in Hong Kong. The hackers captured a significant amount of user profile data of children and their parents, as BBC News reported. The profile data included name, email address, encrypted … Read more

How to Cope with Business Complexity

Business complexity has globally increased in the last three decades. Scope and diversity of products, services, processes and stakeholder relationships have significantly grown. The growth of complexity has come at a price: The world’s largest companies are on average losing more than 1 billion dollar each due to unnecessary complexity. At least this is what … Read more

How to Increase the Odds of Startup Success

Nine out of ten startups fail. Or, if you prefer to look at the bright side, one out of ten startups succeeds. The crucial questions is now: what could you do to increase the odds of being the one in ten? There is no easy answer, and you will get ten different answers, if you … Read more

How Strategic Leaders Use Storytelling

Storytelling has proven to be an effective leadership tool in business communication. Or like US psychologist Howard Gardner said: “Every great leader is a great storyteller”. Thus, it is not surprising that executives at many major companies, like 3M, Nike, and Procter & Gamble, have embraced storytelling. A number of strategic leaders at these and … Read more

Checklist and Resources for Strategic Storytelling

This post complements the blog article “How Strategic Leaders Use Storytelling”. Storytelling Checklist Even if you are a gifted storyteller, considering the following checklist may be useful. Sharing stories in the pub with friends is not the same as sharing stories with other executives and employees for strategic purposes. Thus, a systematic approach to strategic … Read more

The Power of Strategic Questions

Let me start with a question: how frequently do executives and employees ask general, business-related questions in your organization? If your answer is ‘Not too often’, I would recommend to ask yourself ‘Why?’ and ‘How could we change this?’. A tool for strategic leaders Questions are an indispensable tool for strategic thinking. Questions are the … Read more

Balanced Scorecard Revisited – How to Use BSC in Strategic Management

One of the most popular tools for strategy implementation is the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). More than two decades after it was presented to the public by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton in 1992, the BSC has turned out to be one of the most popular management tools, which is not only used by … Read more