May 1, 2013
I’ve been reading too much about some fundamentally misguided corporate governance notions from Cornell Law School professor Lynn Stout. Maybe it’s the author of the piece trying to make something out of nothing, but the article reads as if Prof....
Read More
January 17, 2013
How do you know when you should change your business or keep doing things the same way? Applying two principles, Security and Economy of Force, will help you determine what type of problem you’re facing before you decide how to...
Read More
November 11, 2010
Our first principle to convert from military to mainstream business usage is Mass. Here’s the original: Mass – Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time What mass means from the military perspective is that you bring together whatever...
Read More
October 9, 2010
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures has a recent short post on two kinds of people: takers and makers. Takers make their money by taking from others. They are usually bad business people and their careers often end in failure....
Read More
August 8, 2010
I’ve often thought that there are two kinds of businesses: those that make money from providing more value to customers, and those that make money from providing less value to their customers. This brief article describes 5 grocery store ripoffs....
Read More
May 6, 2010
My pal Rex just posted about teamwork, in the literal sense, over at Grootship. This struck me because the notion of having a ranger buddy was drilled into us in countless ways during Ranger School, not the least of which...
Read More
June 9, 2009
Just recently, we published another post regarding stock buybacks and how the math is the math: you can change your risk profile, but in any case, at some point the usage of cash to buy stock makes sense as a...
Read More
March 27, 2009
(NB: This is a revised repost from Rick’s blog. We realized it might be helpful here.) This recent Seth Godin post was another timely suggestion from him. He seems to really have a finger on the pulse of what is...
Read More
February 9, 2009
Footnoted, a regular read for us, recently found some great references to intra-board conflict resolution, or the lack thereof. This memo by director Thomas Hallagan explains several of the reasons he decided to leave the board of Amerisafe at the...
Read More
January 21, 2009
Since I’ve been involved in the legal profession — fifteen years now — firms and general counsel have been talking about alternative fee structures. The failings of the billable hour system as well as the reasons for its persistence in...
Read More
January 21, 2009
We’ve written before about decisiveness, the skill of being able to make decisions quickly, particularly in an environment of uncertainty and obviously incomplete information. Recognizing that not only will you never have access to complete information that is also completely...
Read More
January 19, 2009
For some time now, we’ve been working with a senior retired banker from Lazard who is on our board of advisers. We essentially hired him to be our boss, in terms of helping us with strategic decisions, setting priorities, and...
Read More
November 1, 2008
The WSj recently published an article regarding the prospects of asking/demanding that political candidates or prospective CEOs release DNA sequence information. For us, even though data-driven analysis is the first phase in our business leadership process (Data-Driven Analytics (DDA), Informed...
Read More
August 24, 2008
“There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” via. This expands on one of Mike’s favorite sayings to use with clients: “the unaimed arrow...
Read More
May 13, 2008
In OCS (for Rick) and at West Point (for Mike), we were both tasked with learning bits of “required knowledge.” These were bits of useful or historical information, such as lifesaving steps or MacArthur’s Duty, Honor, Country quote, or mnemonics...
Read More
March 11, 2008
This article & discussion from Lifehacker.com includes an excerpt from a new book, CrazyBusy. The author, in that excerpt, talks about how we often get entangled today by a desire to have all the data before we make a decision....
Read More
