The Main Blog

What is the One Biggest Problem Faced By Businesses? I’ll provide the answer in a few lines, but first I apologise for using a manipulative technique (that I disdain) to get your attention – the numbered list. There are seemingly endless hoards of well-meaning consultants (and others) providing palliative lists for the business person. Everyone it would seem wants their most intractable problems solved in a single bound - an incredible fantasy, but a collective obsession regardless. There are...

What is the need (job) that customers are buying your ‘product’ (Solution) for? Is the job, in the case of milkshakes, quenching thirst, getting a sugar hit, being fashionable, socialising with friends,  or something else? MacDonald’s® found, with the help of research by Clayton Christensen (a video), that their early morning customers were buying milkshakes, what we in NZ would call thickshakes, to help ease the boredom of a long drive to work and to keep the hunger pangs at bay until...

Cargo Cult Plane It is Cargo Cult Business Advice to recommend creating a Business Plan as the first thing or virtually the first thing you should do if you’re contemplating starting a business. What follows is an example list of the first three recommendations of a typical ten-point starting a business list: Start by creating a SWOT analysis. Where SWOT is a mnemonic acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. I think they meant perform, not create, as the SWOT analysis...

The Scientific Method using the HDETI Process Introduction At the core of good decision-making and what Don’t Think, Check!® uses is the scientific method, where: The scientific method is a set of principles, implemented in empirical processes to acquire knowledge. The specific steps in the processes can vary, but they typically feature, formulating falsifiable hypotheses, designing replicable experiments to validate or invalidate those hypotheses, conducting experiments and gathering...

The canoe metaphor of organisations is a powerful thinking tool. Models, metaphors, analogies and the like are abstractions that help us to understand and manage complexity, i.e., reality. The canoe metaphor of organisations, as depicted in The Canoe Theory: A Secret to Building People and Profit by David Hibbard, Marhnelle Hibbard, and Jack W. Stockman is particularly useful. As with all models and metaphors etc., if you try hard enough you can poke holes in them (no pun intended), but if you...

2 minute read. My first favourite book of 2021 is ‘Think Again’ by Adam Grant, with my favourite podcast still being ‘Making Sense’ by Sam Harris. The premise of Grant’s book is that we should all be prepared to re-evaluate what we believe to be true, to grow and adapt our thinking based on evidence and then again when new evidence becomes available. “After all, the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.” An example Grant gives is of a discussion with a...

WIP - Work In Progess ... See: https://www.dontthinkcheck.co.nz/glossary/brand/

Contents Introduction Business Creation and Improvement Methods The Build, Measure, and Learn Process The Enhanced Build, Measure, and Learn Process The Hypotheses, Design Experiments, Test, and Insights Process Introduction It is instructive to delve a little into the history of Business Model Development Processes before discussing the Hypotheses, Design Experiments, Test, and Insights Process. If you want to skip straight to The Process, then click here. As with many endeavours, when...

Preface This post is a revision of an earlier post titled The 9-Forces Model – Industry Structural Analysis. In the earlier post, The 9-Forces Model was presented, but it clearly showed Ten forces. The tenth force, Environmental Ecology, was almost begrudgingly it would seem, added for the sake of political correctness. Well, political correctness wasn't the goal, but perhaps taking people on a journey of acceptance was. It is well past the time to accept that the willful, ignorant, and...