Skip to content

Insights

Written from engagements.

Publications on AI, strategy and performance improvement, and a running set of shorter pieces on decisions we have watched go well or badly.

Publications

Publications.

Thought leadership on AI, strategy and performance improvement. Read one before you speak to us.

The AI Playbook for Mid-Market Leaders, cover

The AI Playbook for Mid-Market LeadersHow mid-market companies can use AI to reshape their industry.

01 / 06

Articles

Latest articles.

Shorter pieces on strategy decisions, usually someone else’s, and usually with the benefit of hindsight.

12 September 2024Ten tips for cutting business costsTwenty years of cost work, reduced to the ten disciplines that separate a durable cost reduction from one that unwinds inside a year.

21 June 2024Bapcor and the perils of outsourcing your strategic transformationA transformation program large enough to lose track of, and a co-founder’s verdict that the business ended up worse than before.

13 June 2024What a failing vacuum cleaner retailer teaches us about strategyGodfreys was a specialist retailer in a category that moved without it. Its collapse is a lesson in what a strategy has to answer for.

2023Milkrun, a cautionary tale of customer profitabilityA Sydney start-up that raised $86m to reinvent grocery delivery, and collapsed in April 2023. The unit economics were legible from the start.

Cost reductionWhy do cost reduction programs fail so oftenFour themes recur behind cost programs that miss, and each of them is easier to fix before the program starts than during it.

Starting a conversation

Schedule a call.

If something here bears on a decision you are weighing up, a short conversation with a principal is usually the quickest way to test it.