Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
A Lifetime of Systems Thinking Russell Ackoff (reading time: 12 minutes)
I’m still wrapping my head around this article. Systems thinking is easy on the surface but hard to truly grasp. The hard part about difficult problems is that they are hard to solve. Management thinking usually revolves around simple solutions but these tend to fall short. Russell L. Ackoff wrote this at age 80 and it’s a post I’ve bookmarked.
The Strategic Theory of John Boyd Tasshin (reading time: 23 minutes)
I had the chance to meet Tasshin on a call this week and we spoke about our mutual admiration for John Boyd. Tasshin is incredibly bright and passionate about strategy and Boy’s theories. This is a terrific post on John Boyd’s work on military strategy. If you are interested in strategy broadly, you have to check out this post.
Are You Undervaluing Your Customers? Harvard Business Review (reading time: 20 minutes)
Loyalty leaders grow revenues roughly 2.5 times as fast as their industry peers.
What does it mean to be truly customer centric? Many companies espouse customer centricity but few really take the steps to implement customer forward practices. Customer lifetime value should be considered a key asset of a company and I’m still surprised when people don’t measure this. This post HBR provides some ways to measure customer value and make sure that it’s properly accounted for.
Customers Love Free Stuff … But That’s Not Your Problem Bill Gurley (reading time: 32 minutes)
Bill Gurley is one of the most successful venture capitalists of all time. In the past few years, he’s been an outspoken critic of the IPO system and why it’s broken. If you want to understand the topic, sit down and get a coffee. Bill violently brings down the traditional system in this post and offers insights as to why the direct listing is a better route for companies.
In the Early Innings of Ecommerce Ben Futoriansky (reading time: 7 minutes)
Even though ecommerce has been around for a quarter of a century, it still feels young. If you remember buying stuff online 10 years ago, it felt clunky. The experience continues to quickly improve and there is still so much room left. This post offers some insight into five key ecommerce trends shaping the future.
