Setting realistic goals

Rapid growth is a great goal but overreaching can be counter productive. If you want to grow a sound, sustainable business, set goals that are a stretch but not impossible.

Intuition: Co-worker or Curse?

Just how bankable is intuition? Often it's the way to go, often it's not. Alan looks at ways to assess whether or not you should back your hunches.

Dealing with speed

App upgrades are a metaphor for the speed of product innovation. There are a lot of them and they are a feature of any business where change is a constant. What can you do to keep 'Up'?

How to look at the bigger picture

It's easy in business to get stuck in the small stuff. Looking at the bigger picture can be both calming and inspiring. Try stepping back and observing you environment rather than being overwhelmed by it.

The Problem with Strategy

Strategic planning is a creative process; slavishly following the plan is not. For your strategy to work, its needs to be flexible and open to change.

The best idea anyone ever gave me

Do you have trouble keeping track of all your best thoughts, or all those things you are supposed to remember? Someone gave me a great solution. It's been working like a charm for seventeen years.

Fast Strategy: Simple Ways to Boost Value

The main mission for any business is to create value. Alan walks you through a simple process to start focusing on building value. Fully supported by free downloads and apps, this process leads to fast actions that get immediate traction.

Learning from your worst decisions

There are several common element to the worst decisions I've made. A central one is not asking for help when I don't really know what I'm doing. You can avoid a lot of disasters just by accepting that some people do some things better than you. The art of management and the art of delegation are closely related.

Why you need to get out more

It's easy to get stuck in the office, yet that's often the last place where good ideas turn up. To stay at the leading edge, the best managers make a point of getting out more, catching up with customers, suppliers, even competitors.

Good innovators conspire against capitalism

Perfect competition is great in theory but it never actually exists. That's because a business can't thrive in perfect conditions. A successful strategy is often based on creating inefficient markets.