Book Titles

All businesses operate by some set of unstated rules and sometimes these rules change – often in very significant ways.

Competition is about creating change… the ability to recognize that the winds have shifted and to take appropriate action before you wreck your boat is crucial to the future of an enterprise.

Middle managers – especially those who deal with the outside world, like people in sales – are often the first to realize that what worked before doesn’t quite work anymore; that the rules are changing.

…most CEOs… [are] in the center of a fortified palace, and the news from the outside has to percolate through layers of people from the periphery where the action is.

…we need to expose ourselves to the winds of change. We need to expose ourselves to our customers, both the ones who are staying with us as well as those that we may lose by sticking to the past.

New techniques, new approaches, new technologies can upset the old order, mandate a new set of rules and create an entirely new climate in which to do business.

…a strategic inflection point is when the balance of forces shifts from the old structure, from the old ways of doing business and the old ways of competing, to the new.

…misalignment between corporate statements and operational actions hints at more than the normal chaos that you have learned to live with.

Timing is everything. If you undertake these changes while your company is still healthy, while your ongoing business forms a protective bubble in which you can experiment with the new ways of doing business, you can save much more of your company’s strength, your employees and your strategic position.

When an industry goes through a strategic inflection point, the practitioners of the old art may have trouble.