6 min read Free

Lessons from Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of Research In Motion

Jim Balsillie is the former co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIM, ‘BlackBerry’). He joined the company in 1992. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1989 and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Toronto in 1984. I was interested in learning more about Jim Balsillie because
Strategy 2 min read Free

Company mission in crises

In her posts In the Future, All Brands Will Be B Corps, Ana Andjelic writes that "Crises are great truth-tellers. Brands are, in real-time, going through the crash course in social responsibility, and there are already winners and losers. Winners acknowledge what their customers are going through. Losers are
Strategy 1 min read Free

The roundabout path to strategy

The traditional idea behind strategy is the deployment of resources against some objectives. Each year, organizations engage in processes akin to magical rites with the goal of coming up with a plan. We know what to do, we know why we should do it and we know how to do
1 min read Free

Overcoming impostor syndrome by asking good questions

Impostor syndrome is when you experience the sentiment of not being enough, even though you might be performing well. In the long run, having the persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud can negatively impact how we perform. In strategy consulting, the impostor syndrome can be strong, as you
1 min read Free

How to evaluate the quality of business books

In What Makes Good Models and How to Use Them, Emmanuel Derman explains that in social science, you have to work hard to have a usable theory of anything. The challenge with most business books is that they do not make the difference between theories and models. Theories tell us
Strategy 4 min read Free

The strategy idea maze

A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin defines strategy as an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions a firm to create sustainable competitive advantage and superior value relative to their competitors. Beside its use in military, the use of strategy in business is relatively new. Strategy as a function
Strategy 2 min read Free

Organizational debt and conceptual clarity

In his book, The Messy Middle, Scott Belsky describes “organizational debt”: Leaders who can’t make tough decisions cause their teams to accumulate “organizational debt.” Like the notion of “technical debt,” which is the accumulation of old code and short-term solutions that collectively burden a team over time, organizational debt
Profile 5 min read Free

Lessons from Charles Sirois, CEO of Telesystem

Charles Sirois is the founder, chairman and CEO of Telesystem, a Canadian private equity company. In 1978 he launched his business career by taking over its family-owned paging company. The paging company became the leading player in Canada and 1987 he merged his companies with Bell Cellular to form BCE
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