Insights
Strategy notes, methods, and case studies. Most of them are perpendicular to something.
Three ways to tell if your strategy is load-bearing
Most strategic plans can't support their own weight once the presentation ends.
How to run a surface analysis workshop in 90 minutes
A step-by-step protocol for mapping the assumptions under a strategy with your team, including what to do when someone insists the surface is perfectly flat.
The strategy that looks good in every dimension but one
When a plan survives every stress test except the question you forgot to ask, you're working in a degenerate subspace.
When projection fails: recognizing non-portable strategy
Not every idea survives context transfer, and that failure is data worth capturing.
Case study: projecting a bakery's loyalty program into a second context
A regional bakery wanted to grow its loyalty program. We moved it into three other contexts to see what survived. Two of the three projections were useful.
In defense of the billable tangent
Tangents touch an idea at one point and then leave. Most are waste. A few are the most valuable thing a team does all quarter.
Surface analysis: mapping the assumptions your plan is resting on
Every plan rests on three or four things nobody has said out loud. A practical method for finding them before the market does.
Every idea has a normal. Most teams never look along it.
Teams refine their ideas in every direction except the one that points straight out of them. A short case for looking perpendicular.