The Blog
Long-form essays, field notes, and frameworks from the FIRMSconsulting team — published weekly.
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The Rise of Reddit Traders
The Rise of Reddit Traders The other big topic that everyone’s talking about is the rise of Reddit traders. Through a sequence of collective actions, they forced a number of hedge funds—a large number of them are short sellers—to lose a ton of money, and in many cases receive a bailout from other hedge funds.…
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Corporate Strategy Is About Trends
Corporate Strategy Is About Trends With the rise of COVID, we’ve seen huge trends take over, galvanize and basically capture the entire world within a short period of time. Corporate strategy is about how one identifies and responds to trends. It’s about knowing when your business should find a trend, knowing when to jump in,…
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How to Create a Career Strategy for an Executive
How to Create a Career Strategy for an Executive I’m going to leave you with some thoughts on developing a career strategy for an executive. Most of our clients are fairly successful and senior, usually in their thirties, forties, some of them around fifties. They’re senior managers, executive managers, executive vice presidents and CEOs. Some…
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Analyzing the Competition Is Hard
Analyzing the Competition Is Hard Competition is hard to understand because nobody knows what their competitors are thinking. Competitors usually send signals into the market to mislead their peers. Samsung recently announced that they’re looking to make a $17 billion investment in chip fabrication in the United States. Clearly, Samsung is sending a message to competitors,…
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Delicate Balance Needed in a Turnaround
Delicate Balance Needed in a Turnaround There are many interesting pieces about companies facing turnaround problems—from banks like Wells Fargo, to large retailers, to food and beverage companies—and these difficulties are more pronounced with COVID-19. Let’s talk about what is happening in turnarounds, why they are so difficult, and some pieces that many people have…
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Synergy Is Very Hard to Achieve
Synergy Is Very Hard to Achieve Sony, a large Japanese entertainment and electronics company, for many years struggled to get synergy across its various arms. It has video game consoles, a huge music catalog and access to intellectual property like the Spider Man brand. They also make movies, and now they own comics. Even though…
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What Is a Digital & IT Strategy?
What Is a Digital & IT Strategy? Many news articles have raised the issues of getting an IT strategy to work. The Wall Street Journal talked about Volkswagen Group’s difficulties in putting together a program to take on Tesla. There was another piece about retailers facing difficulties in going digital and making sure their e-commerce operations are…
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Promising Careers Are Also a Venus Flytrap
Promising Careers Are Also a Venus Flytrap I want to wrap up today’s Monday Morning 8 a.m. by talking about a big theme I see with executive coaching clients. I call this theme: “Promising careers are also a Venus flytrap.” When I work with clients, I ask them how their career is going. We’ve developed…
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Amazon and Knowing That One Thing That Drives Your Strategy
Amazon and Knowing That One Thing That Drives Your Strategy The next big theme I want to talk about is a little bit close to me because I used to be a corporate strategy senior partner, is what I call Amazon and knowing that one thing that drives your strategy. As you know, Jeff Bezos is…
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Shared Values vs. Paid Friends
Shared Values vs. Paid Friends The third theme is an interesting one because it comes from an executive coaching client in Australia who is the chief operating officer for a very large services company. He runs a very prestigious firm, and most of their offices are in Australia, Singapore, Japan and the United States. They…
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Apple’s Car and What It Means for Manufacturing
Apple’s Car and What It Means for Manufacturing Apple Car is about to enter the auto market, and it’s all over the news. I mentioned this earlier about what it means for decoupling and so on, but I’m going to take it further because I received many questions about this. I’m going to talk about…
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Value Chain Migration Death March
Value Chain Migration Death March We’re going to start with what I call the value chain migration death march. I’m referring to the universal tendency across every company, anywhere in the world, to want to respond to their envy. In every single sector in the world, there’s a value chain. On the one side, usually the…