Category Archives: efficient strategies

How to Defeat Control Strategies

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Bill Carson

THERE’S a cannon that’s already lobbed a couple of shells at you, creating geysers more nearby than you’d like. The gunner behind that cannon is your mortal adversary.  He knows that if you can get in close enough, your torpedoes will blow his ship to Kingdom Come – and him with it.  His advantage is long-range cannon power, and the stable platform of a battle cruiser to shoot from.  Yours is that you’re driving the fastest, most maneuverable naval boat afloat. Your engines are red-lining and howling.  You’re racing at his ship in your Patrol Torpedo (PT) Boat at maximum … Continue reading →

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Strategy in the News: Lasso and Lascaux

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Bill Carson

LASSO Well-regarded author Patricia O’Brien had produced 5 novels.  But her last one hadn’t sold well, and her Simon & Shuster editor declined to publish her new one, “The Dressmaker”.  A dozen more publishers also rejected the efforts of her well-known literary agent, Esther Newberg, to secure a contract for the book. What was going on?  Turns out O’Brien’s book was being rejected because her numbers had been lowered in Nielsen BookScan, a book sales tracking service, as a result of the performance of her most recent book.  And the publishing house editors were making their publishing decisions based on … Continue reading →

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Anatomy of a Strategy

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Bill Carson

Gotta’ have Anatomy Look at the guys in the Rembrandt painting.  They’re old doctors getting an anatomy lesson from the one wearing a hat.  Troubling.  How can you have been a doctor unless you understood the parts of the body and how they work together?  But here these puzzled-looking doctors are, finally getting an anatomy lesson. Reminds me of where we are with strategy today.  We need a small dose of strategy anatomy. It was quite a lag in time before the Western medical profession adopted what should be considered the most minimal understanding necessary to be a practicing doctor.  But in many … Continue reading →

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Mismatch – the Heart of a Strategy

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Bill Carson

Trick question Question 1:  What do successful strategies for drilling a board, catching a pass and winning a dogfight have in common?  Answer:  a mismatch between an advantage and a vulnerability. Question 2:  In what way is Question 1 a trick question? Answer:  because at bottom all successful strategies are based on a mismatch – it has nothing to do with the specifics of the 3 examples. And that’s the point. To have a successful strategy of any kind, you have to arrange for a mismatch that will result in getting to your objective. And what is a mismatch?  It’s a disparity in some … Continue reading →

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