Mr Lewis

Tag: strategy

  • What great questions have you got?

    My son, like many children, had his birthday around the cutoff date for entry into Primary school. So my wife and I had a choice “do we send him a little earlier, or a little late.  My position on the matter was “Give me one good reason we should hold him back”. And we couldn’t…

  • 4 Keys to deploying Social Media

    Last Thursday the Churchill Club ran event on using Social Media for Sponsorship and Fundraising. It was a great evening with perspectives coming from Peter Williams (CEO Deloitte Digital), Jeremy Kann (General Manager, Sales & Commercial at Australian Grand Prix Corporation) and Vicki Kyriakakas (Communications Manager at Environment Victoria). It was quite a wide ranging…

  • A modern parable for tough times

    Most forecasters seem to agree that despite the fact we have sidestepped the worst of the global financial crisis, we still have tough times ahead. And in tough times, one of the things you need to do is be innovative and work your assets harder.   Note,  Competitors that don’t innovate – die. Which I like…

  • 3 questions around a good idea…

    Last week I mentioned I was going to have lunch with an old workmate Glenn to discuss an idea he been asked to get involved with.  I responded to his initial email in detail about things to think about in regards to getting involved, but not whether the idea was a good one in the…

  • The Boogey Man

    One of my relatives occasionally drives me mad with his worrying: How would it look if he failed? What would his wife say? What if he didn’t like it? His worrying almost always to takes the same form. 1.    Identify the worst case outcome (eg usually a combination of bankruptcy/divorce courts/public ridicule). 2.    Don’t explore…

  • unknown, unknowns

    I’m currently reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb [pls link to  ] . Its a fascinating book that discusses why the improbable seems to happen a lot more than people expect. There was a section in the book that talked about the military and how they talk about “Known, Unknowns” and “Unknown, Unknowns”.…

  • On the subject of Advisory Boards

    The other week I sat down with my technology advisory board and felt my self lucky.  Here I was with a group of industry leaders that I barely knew, talking about great ideas for my business.  The cost to me was close to zero but their ideas were invaluable. But getting to the point were…

  • On the subject of lifespan

    Last week I discussed one of the major problems I had with my IT services business Edion, the issue that the business wasn’t scalable.  Another issue we had is that my concept of its lifespan was wrong.  As anyone who goes into business for himself is aware, no business lasts for ever, in fact 95%…

  • On the subject of Scalability

    A number of years ago I had a business that offered IT professional services.  We defined professional services as high level IT project skills such as designing networks and commissioning  web server farms.  Edion ran hard and fast from the beginning, clocking up over $1M in sales in year one, and around $3M in year…

  • Failing or Flailing?

    In the late 80’s when I was training to be an Army Reserve Officer, one of the major training (and leadership development) techniques that had a major impact on me was ownership of failure.  If you taught a lesson and more than a handful of people failed the quick test at the end, then you…