June 2, 2015
by Dagmar
Comments Off on The benefits of being a private company
Private companies are less in the spotlight than public companies. Thus, they have less stress with quarterly reports and analyst calls. But, are there any real strategic benefits from being a private company than these more practical advantages? Continue Reading →
May 27, 2015
by Dagmar
1 Comment
Did you ever check the average length of service of your company’s employees?
Did you check the average tenure after which employees leave your business?
Did you check if these average figures changed over the last decade?
I bet they decreased.
Is this a good or a bad sign?  Continue Reading →
May 21, 2015
by Dagmar
Comments Off on Can you learn strategy from case studies?
Did you ever have to solve a case study?
Did you ever ask yourself if the time it took to read a case study was a good investment?
Did you ever wonder if business schools really can teach their students to be good managers with their case study approaches?
Can you really learn strategic thinking from case studies? Continue Reading →
May 12, 2015
by Dagmar
4 Comments
This is just a little story from real life. Only a few minutes to read and you know one more trap you would not expect in your planning process.
Everyone knows how to calculate the market share. In general, market share is your own sales volume divided by the total market volume. Of course, there are some variations. For instance, the relative market share is your own sales volume divided by that of your largest competitor. However, as long as you know your sales (what you actually should know) and have a halfway accurate estimate of the market volume, it is fairly easy to come up with your market share.
That’s what you might think. That is what I thought until some years ago. Continue Reading →
May 5, 2015
by Dagmar
Comments Off on What competitive strategy is all about
Today I like to share a nugget from my current reading.
I am a big fan of the classic writings on strategy. The original writings of the big strategic thinkers of the past still reveal valuable insights for today.
Bruce D. Henderson is the man who we have to thank for the Boston Box (or Growth-Share-Matrix). He wrote in 1976: Continue Reading →
April 29, 2015
by Dagmar
Comments Off on Deutsche Bank’s new strategy – Is it anything better than the previous Strategy 2015+?
Deutsche Bank has announced its new strategy on 27 April, 2015. Will this one be the big step forward that finally repositions the bank as a profitable global player? I have my doubts. In order to understand why, we first have to look back at Deutsche Bank’s Strategy 2015+ that was announced in 2012. Continue Reading →
April 23, 2015
by Dagmar
2 Comments
Commonplace books? You may even have one and not know it!
Commonplace books are excellent tools for keeping notes of whatever is important to you. They are popular among writers, thinkers, artists and many others. Surprisingly, there is little public coverage for the use of commonplace books in business and workplace contexts.
I have been keeping commonplace books for years now. Before I realized that there actually is a name for them, I just called them my notebooks or my outsourced brain.
In this article, I share my practical experience from using commonplace books at work. Continue Reading →
April 17, 2015
by Dagmar
Comments Off on Themanager.org relaunch complete
We are happy to announce themanager.org has undergone a complete makeover.
It was more than time to make this site more modern and user friendly. Please go there and have a look at the result!
I’d like to give you a quick tour to show you where to find what.
What has changed, what has remained the same?
You will discover that many things have changed. However, the core of our management portal has remained the same. Continue Reading →
March 28, 2015
by Dagmar
2 Comments
Strategic decisions are decisions about an organization’s strategy. There is no doubt that strategic decisions have a major impact on any organization. However, when it comes to really strategic decision making, things tend to get a bit blurry. Not all future-oriented decisions are strategic ones. In order to develop great strategies, it is essential to comprehend the true nature of strategic decisions.
There are some characteristics that help to understand what makes a decision strategic. Continue Reading →
March 17, 2015
by Dagmar
1 Comment
The term ‚profit’ stands for the difference between revenue and costs. However, for one and the same activity, profit does not necessarily have to be the same number under different points of view. Different accounting standards or special regulations for taxation make organizations display different profits in financial statements for different purposes. On top of that, profit from the accountant’s point of view is not equal to profit from the economist’s point of view. This difference is based in fundamentally different understandings of costs and profits. This article describes the differences of profit in accounting and economics. Continue Reading →