Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Strategy Is Key
46% of Failures Stemmed From Bad StrategiesNot From Bad Luck or Poor Execution
Constructive Contention
1. Informal Devils Advocate 2. Smooth Management Ruts 3. First, Decide How to Decide 4. Find History That Fits 5. Bet on It 6. Stare Into the Abyss 7. Construct Alarm Systems 8. Always Have Escalation Systems 9. Hold Second-Chance Meetings
Biography
Paul Carroll has spent nearly three decades writing, lecturing and consulting on business issues. He spent 17 years at the Wall Street Journal, which twice nominated him for Pulitzer Prizes. He wrote the best-selling Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM (Crown, 1993). He founded and edited Context, the first of what became known as new economy magazines; the magazine helped senior executives think about the strategic implications of information technology. Paul is also a former partner with Diamond Management & Technology Consultants. His latest book is Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years (Portfolio, 2008). A companion article, Seven Ways to Fail Big, appears in the September 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review. More information is available at www.billiondollarlessons.com