Correct your course early by using the
devil's advocate approach.
The story of a business success inspires us.
A study of business failures provide us with an education.
Chunka Mui and Paul Carroll
carefully reviewed 750 of the
greatest business failures
over the last 25 years. Surprisingly the main
cause of failure was not poor leadership, or bad execution, or
rotten luck - it was strategy that was misguided.
And the seven most
common failures in strategy include synergies that were
illusory,
misjudgments,
faulty financial premises, and others.
And each pattern has predictable red flags.
In many situations we naturally make bad
decisions! We are prone to settling on answers before we have
all the facts and then look for evidence to support our answers.
Our decisions are affected by our emotions, our loyalties, our
allegiance to group thinking, and many other factors.
Mai suggests that
a devil's advocate review be implemented to improve decision
making and that it should be used throughout the strategy
process.
Chunka Mui
is a fellow with Diamond Management & Technology Consultants and
a partner with Cornerloft Partners, LLC. He co-authored with
Larry Downes “Unleashing the Killer App, Digital Strategies for
Market Dominance,” and co-authored with Paul Carroll “Billion
Dollar Lessons.” He holds a BS in Computer Science and
Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Billion-Dollar
Lessons:
What You Can Learn
from Business Failures
- Chunka Mui