Dear Board and Senior Leaders,

Best practices are for the lazy and risk-averse leaders.

Yes, I said it.

Every time a CEO or executive tells me they want to implement “best practices,” I know exactly what’s coming next: A safe, predictable, and utterly forgettable company that will be disrupted in five years if not sooner.

If you’re copying what others have done, you’re already behind. And if you believe best practices will future-proof your business, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Read more >>

“A strategy that offends no one excites no one”

Most CEOs think their biggest challenge is competition. It’s not. The real threat? The slow, silent decay of their business model. The problem isn’t that change is happening too fast. It’s that you’re reacting too slow.

Comfort kills

I once worked with a once-thriving manufacturing firm. Their CEO bragged about their "proven model." Profits were steady. The leadership team was comfortable. Then, a nimble competitor introduced a direct-to-customer model, cutting out middlemen. In less than three years, the "proven model" became a liability. Sales plummeted. Market share vanished. The CEO blamed the economy. The real culprit? His refusal to see the iceberg ahead.Read more >>

Ever heard a leader explain their strategy and thought, What the hell does that even mean?

I have. Too many times. With AI, VUCA, Machine Learning, etc everyone talks of “future-proofing your organization”. The jargon is too much to keep up with. All you need is a simple, clear strategy.

As Mr Strategy, I get many opportunities to occupy frontline seats during strategy discussions. I once sat in a boardroom where a senior executive proudly unveiled their new strategy: "Leveraging technology capabilities to drive scalable efficiencies within a disruptive market paradigm."

No one knew what to do next. Because that wasn’t a strategy was some TED Talk in corporate lofty gibberish.

Here’s the brutal truth: If your team can’t explain the strategy at lunch, it’s too complicated. And if it’s too complicated, no one will execute it. Read more >>

This thought-provoking book offers an incisive examination of corporate governance from both a historical and contemporary point of view…I highly recommend it for your useful and sustainable leadership benefit” – Michael Mugabi, Former President, Institute of Corporate Governance of Uganda.