Most strategies and enterprise deals fail because teams rush to solve a problem nobody bothered to define. This post walks through a simple four part framing method (hero, treasure, dragon, quest) and shows how to apply it to products, sales deals and RFx processes so your effort always lands on the real issue.
The three strategy meta skills that never expire. Most strategy fails quietly – fuzzy thinking, vague writing, hesitant execution. This post breaks down the three strategy meta skills (think clearly, write sharply, act boldly) and the iteration loop that turns them into a durable advantage, with lessons from two decades of product and deal leadership across Latin America.
Clear thinking is the practice of bringing structure to your thoughts and guiding them toward a big goal, instead of juggling too many at once. This post looks at how messy thinking shows up in real commercial and product work, and how to build the organized, proactive, long-term habits that turn noise into judgment.
The big idea is the central, unifying concept that gives a strategy purpose, momentum and difference. This post walks through the six checks – clarity, relevance, tension, an actionable playbook, validation and stickiness – and shows how to apply them to products, plans and high-stakes enterprise deals.
A field-tested, plain-language guide to the GE-McKinsey nine-box matrix, from scoring the two axes honestly to turning the nine boxes into clear invest, hold, and exit decisions. Written for leaders who manage products, services, markets, or deal pipelines and want a portfolio tool that stays useful for years.
For most of my career, I learned to read those pressures by instinct, deal by deal, loss by loss.
Then I realized Michael Porter had already given us a disciplined way to see them in advance. His five forces model, first published in 1979, is still one of the most practical strategy tools ever created, not because it is sophisticated, but because it forces you to look beyond the competitors you can name and examine the entire structure of the market you fight in.
Tools, platforms, and algorithms will keep changing. The journey of a customer, to discover, interact, decide, and stay, is human, and therefore stable.
The smart insights framework endures because it is organized around that human journey and wrapped in the discipline of planning and measurement. Use it as your map, keep your KPIs honest, attack the constraint, and build engagement as seriously as you build acquisition.