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Only Six Types of Successful Acquisitions?
According to the self-assured analysis of McKinsey, there are only six types of successful acquisitions. Cutting directly to the chase, they are: Improving the target firm’s performance; Removing industry excess capacity; Creating market access for services;... read more +Only Six Types of Successful Acquisitions?
According to the self-assured analysis of McKinsey, there are only six types of successful acquisitions. Cutting directly to the chase, they are: Improving the target firm's performance; Removing industry excess capacity; Creating market access for services;...
read moreYou Don’t Want Leaders, and You’re Not Getting Them
We don't often write purposefully on the topic of leadership, if for no other reason than it's hard for most people to get past, "I know it when I see it," but more substantively because we think it perfuses so much of our writing and thinking. But we have not taken...
read moreWho’s Your Firm’s Real Client?
There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer. --Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York,: Harper, 1st ed. 1954); Routledge, 2012, at p. 37 Urban legend has it that a Harvard Business School professor (who is never...
read moreSears: 1886-2018
Sometimes when a corporation fails you could have seen it coming decades ago and so it's not news. But rarely you could have seen it coming decades ago and it's still news. Thus with Sears' bankruptcy filing. "Attention, attention must finally be paid...." Linda's...
read moreIs Your Firm Playing to Win, or Not to Lose?
Recent conversation with a veteran friend in the industry. He had correctly deduced from a recent column in these pages that I'm (re-)reading the all-time strategy classic Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin (Harvard Business Review Press: 2013) and he...
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