Psychology of Money (Housel, 2020)

Listened to The Psychology of Money audiobook on Libby app while driving to Florida recently. For those who want to buy the book here (affiliate link). The thesis is simple and powerful. You don’t need to be a MBA to make good money decisions. A lot of this is...

Podcast interviews: learn from everyone

Listen to interview podcasts We can all agree that mentors are great. They have the wisdom that comes from experience. They’ve seen it before and they can save us the trouble and the heartache of their own mistakes. These can be people you don’t know. This...

How to improve US healthcare?

Complex problems do not have simple answers There is not a simple answer. It took US healthcare 70+ years to get this fragmented, complex, political, entrenched, somewhat inequitable, and definitely exhausting place. It will take a lot of competition, collaboration,...

One Pager: Big Tech hires lots of economists

Yes, economists work for Big Tech Read a short, and surprising, article from the Economist. They shared these startling facts: Amazon has some 400 full-time economists on staff Tech firms hired one in seven newly minted PhDs in 2022 Heck, Uber hired a fifth of Harvard...

One pager: US states have a revenue surplus

One PowerPoint a day I tell junior consultants to practice making PowerPoints. Read a simple article, group the ideas into buckets. Write a useful title. Have a diagram that helps understanding. Use data points to persuade. This is one for today.   US state tax...

Jack Welch in his own words: Winning

Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric To baby boomers and Gen-X, this a corporate titan who’s name you will remember. He led a renaissance in GE, driving its market capitalization from $14B to $400B+ 20 years later. He famously whittled down GE’s...

One page PPT: CFOs 3 jobs

Chief Financial officers have to juggle CFOs are trying to juggle 3 competing demands for resources and their time: Optimal capital structure Investor returns Investment in the business With the increase in interest rates, I thought this would be a mighty problem for...

Strategy class, 175 questions

As we near the end of the semester, I’m proud of my students and how much we’ve learned. It’s a learning journey full of questions, curiosity, discussion and debate. A safe place to learn. These are 175+ questions that Emory BBA would feel...

The danger of averages

For consultants and all those who solve problems for a living, we know that “average” is a bit of a dirty word. A misnomer. “Average” is a four-letter word Averages are lazy; shows a lack of effort. Averages are inherently reductive and often...

Bain: Global PE Report 2020 (part 1)

Bain & Co published their Global 2020 Private Equity Report here in February 2020. Like all things Bain, it is very readable and useful. Here’s my tear down of the first 30 pages of the report: Buyout firms have outperformed Starting with the main point, PE...

New blog: www.StrategyHappyHour.com

I started this blog in 2012.  Now, eight years later, I am starting a new blog here. I will be the editor, not the writer. Started blogging in 2012 When I started a new job in 2011, there was not a lot of work. Our group was not that busy and I was a bit bored. ...

Remote learning, what worked

Starting in mid-March, I went on an intellectual camping trip with 226 university students. We decided (a generous expression) to take our learning remote. How did it go? What did I learn? What worked? As with all things strategy, it involves trade-offs and using your...

Berkshire Hathaway 2019 Shareholder Letter

Small gift. Found a great business resource online, for free, that chronicles 40+ years of business thinking. Written by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, legendary investors at Berkshire Hathaway (BRK). All put together into a book, it is 600 pages long with 4.6...

HBR: Big Lie of Strategic Planning

First of all, you gotta love the provocative title of this article from Roger Martin, ex-Dean of Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto here. Big. Lie.  Hard to get past those two words. Big Lie. Why is strategy (potentially) a scary thing? Martin starts...

The Economist: Covid-19

Yuk, news all the time. . . Like everyone else, I’ve been a bit glued to my phone – looking at the continually “breaking news” on the Covid-19 crisis. Frankly, there is a lot to know and be concerned about.  As I told my students, the entire...

AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee, chapter 1

I listened to a podcast interview with Kai-Fu Lee a few months ago and immediately ordered his book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (2018, affiliate link).  Since then, I’ve order several copies for friends. If you want to get...

50+ final strategy papers

It’s the end of the semester, so I will be grading 50+ final strategy papers. Unlike previous write-ups, the students have the freedom to choose their company and use any resources they want.  This sounds deceptively simple: choose a company, do the research,...

Rework, written by founders of Basecamp

It’s good to have a healthy skepticism with “business books.” Afterall, there are 8,000 of them published every year. Most are banal, reductionist, or derivative (fancy way of saying, boring). Rework (affiliate link) was written in 2010, and...

Deloitte 2019 Banking Industry Outlook

Deloitte published their 2019 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook here. (2.4Mb, 40pgs).  Times have been good, historically low interest rates with moderate growth. What’s not to like? High-level takeaways Return on Equity (ROE) for Western banks is up to 8.6%...

Factfulness – Hans Rosling

Many of you have probably seen Hans Rosling’s famous TED talk where he describes 200+ years of economic history using animated bubble charts and a very big stick. See below. Factfulness is the book.  Factfulness: 10 Reasons We’re Wrong About the World,...

Cal Newport: So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Huge fan of this book, phrase, and career philosophy. In fact, I mention this book to 400+ Emory students every year. So Good They Cannot Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Question for Work You Love (affiliate link). This was written in 2012 by Cal Newport,...

HBR: Why do consultants go independent?

This HBR article has a catchy title: Why Consultants Quit Their Jobs and Go Independent (July 2019).  You can easily guess the top 3 reasons: 1) More work-life balance 2) Better compensation, sometimes 3) Less internal politics.  The potential downsides are equally...

Review: White Coat Investor

Recently read a 150pg book on personal financial advice targeting physicians. It’s called White Coat Investor (affiliate link) by James Dahle, a practicing emergency room doctor. Good title, huh? It has a matching website, and podcast here. My physician...

July 4. More G.E.M. and less F.E.A.R.

July the 4th is Independence Day in the United States. It’s exactly the right time to reflect on what it means to be American, and how America fits in the world. Yes, its more than fireworks, BBQ, and swimming pools. Exactly six years ago, I blogged saying July...

Compare and Contrast: Texas, California

Consultants excel at making sense of disparate, messy, and sometimes conflicting data. This is not a robotic exercise in copy/paste into an excel – no – you’ve got to think through the problem. What’s relevant? What’s valid? Can you find...

Deloitte: Pivoting to Digital Maturity

Deloitte recently published Pivoting to Digital Maturity: 7 Capabilities Central to Digital Transformation here. They surveyed 1,200 executives (74% C-level executives, remainders VPs) and identified 7 PIVOTS that can help organizations push the digital transformation...

Who wants the global talent?

For all of its faults, the United States has been the destination of choice for emigrants since – well – for half a century. Personally, I have friends and family who got their green cards just within the last few years. The US continues to be a magnet for...

Bain: Healthcare M&A in 2018

Bain & Co released a Healthcare Private Equity and Corporate M&A Report 2019 here. (1.7Mb, 64 pages) Last week’s blog post was on private equity portion. This week, I am covering the M&A portion. Healthcare M&A = $435 Billion in 2018 As a...

Bain: Healthcare PE in 2018

Bain & Co released a Healthcare Private Equity and Corporate M&A Report 2019 here. (1.7Mb, 64 pages) First blog post on the private equity half. Bain & Company notes that “there was significant activity across all segments of the value chain.”...

Who is Chris Sacca?

Yes, you may have seen him on Shark Tank. He is an UBER-successful angel investor and venture capitalist. Famous for his wearing vintage cowboy shirts and being on the ground floor of Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Facebook. Listened to a 90 min interview of him by Tim...

Great Podcast Interviews

  Gift for you – podcast playlist  Someone recently asked for a few podcast recommendations (hat tip: JZ), so I put together a playlist of 60+ podcast interviews.  Two ways to subscribe:  From your Iphone, click here and hold down for 1 second. It will open...

100+ Healthcare Links

Yes, US Healthcare can be a puzzle. Or worse, a labyrinth, a Gordian knot. First, I would probably spend 5-10 hours skimming The Health Care Handbook 3rd edition, 2023 Askins, Moore. Google things of interest. As a second step, here is my resource list of 90+ links to...

US Healthcare Strategy?

US Healthcare has so much potential, yet, it remains a super-fragmented, inefficient, and often unjust system. In sum, it’s broken in many places. In the fall, I facilitate a graduate-level course where we try to grok the root causes of an industry which is 1/5...

Consultant’s Advice: Use numbers

Numbers are compelling. They are easy to see and remember. They serve as proof. No wonder your resume bullets should have them.  The Economist uses numbers to great effect. In fact, they love fractions. Copy/pasted quotes from last two issues of the Economist. All...

Winter reading list 2018

Reached out to readers of the ConsultantsMind blog and asked what they recommend for students on winter break. Here’s a list of books and podcasts. Using first name initial, title, and any other words they might have shared. Caveat: affiliate links.   E,...

The Internet is Thin

Pre-internet I am Generation X. This means lots of things – but for me, it means that I remember life pre-internet. Yes, 1994 was a pivotal year. Crappy job, serious career angst; but the dawn of unlimited information thanks for the Mosaic Netscape browser. Yes,...

Economist – November 2018

Read the Economist. Full stop. It’s well-written, free-market, slow-news, and entirely useful. If you pick up a copy from 6 months ago, it’s still relevant because they talk about trends, and key drivers. Not the day-to-day gyrations of public opinion,...

BCG: Synergies take center stage

M&A continues to boom; 36,000 deals announced in 2017 BCG published a report on 2017 M&A called M&A: Synergies Take Center Stage (Sept 2018) here. (2.7Mb pdf). It’s 33 pages, and gives a run down of all the major deals and trends. Here’s my...

In memory: Lehman Brothers (1850-2008)

This week is the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the global financial crisis of 2008, and the end of Lehman Brothers, one of the most storied Wall Street firms. A new play opened in London called the “Lehman Trilogy”, and there’s a great...