by Consultant's Mind | Strategy
PESTEL and Porter’s 5 Forces Industry analysis is a core part of strategy. Think of Michael Porter’s iconic 5 Forces framework. Yet, we can all agree that the world is changing and fluid. Twenty years ago, would any of us have thought: Disney would...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
One PowerPoint slide a Day I first heard the expression “One PowerPoint a Day” reading McKinsey Way (affiliate link), many many years ago and still find it useful. While management consultants have many flaws (oh yeah, we do), we are generally disciplined thinkers. ...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Not a lawyer So I couldn’t tell you the difference between copyright and trademark (whoa, ignorance), until I read this article from the Economist. It turns out that many famous works are going into the public domain. This means that you can adapt and use it...
by Consultant's Mind | Fun
Amazon needs to be good at forecasting Saw this 6 page article here on how Amazon has tweaked their forecasting algorithm over the last 15 years. I am not a statistician or machine learning expert, yet, I found the article very easy to read, undertsanding, and...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) This is Marketing 101 for many reasons: There is no such thing as an average customer Groups of customers are not just defined by where they live or how old they are In a free market, customers will always have some choice,...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Private equity (PE) has outperformed By most measures, private equity has given investors better returns that most asset classes over the last 5, 10, and 20 year time frames. It’s been an incredible run. The names of Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo have been become...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Parents worry about their kids’ education Of course they do. That’s part of the job description. Clothe them, feed them, love them, teach them values, and give them the education they need to win in life. Yeah, talk about an underpaid job. The last two...
by Consultant's Mind | Graphics
One-pagers are super useful Consultant put their thoughts on PowerPoint. Sometimes, it’s for the final presentation, but much more often, it’s for simple one-pagers. These one-pagers serve a diversity of purposes: Checklist of data collection progress and...
