Focusing business resources without losing flexibility
Learn how a small business can concentrate effort on a valuable customer problem, test uncertain choices and expand carefully without committing every resource.
13 min read
Insights category
Business
Operations, building businesses, systems and decisions.
Articles in Business
From prospect to customer: proposals, objections and decisions
The satisfying stage turns a qualified opportunity into a customer. How to build a proposal around the customer's own words, handle objections as information, and make saying yes easy.
10 min read
When others decide too: game theory for business decisions
Your best choice often depends on what others do. A plain-English guide to dominant strategies, Nash equilibrium, the prisoner's dilemma and how people really reason about each other.
10 min read
Gross margin: the quickest test of pricing power
Why gross margin is often the first number to check when judging a business, what high and low margins usually signal, and how founders can design for healthy margins.
10 min read
Housing booms: what drives them and how to read them
Housing is most households' largest asset and a major driver of the economy. What pushes house prices up, how to judge whether a housing boom has become stretched, and what it means for businesses.
10 min read
Institution or people? Where the profits of a service business end up
In some service businesses customers trust the organisation; in others they trust individuals. That difference decides who captures the profit, and it shapes how service businesses should be built.
10 min read
Involving the people who will deliver your strategy
Build a planning process that includes decision-makers and implementers, surfaces practical constraints and turns shared discussion into clear, supported commitments.
13 min read
Learning from small numbers: estimating rates with Bayesian thinking
How to estimate conversion rates, defect rates and success rates when you only have a little data, using priors, pseudo-counts and honest uncertainty instead of misleading percentages.
10 min read
Borrowing against a boom: leverage, equity withdrawal and risk
Rising asset prices make it easy to borrow against homes and investments. How leverage magnifies gains and losses, why boom-time borrowing is so risky, and how to keep it safe.
10 min read
Listening: the most under-trained skill in business
Most of us believe we listen well, few of us were ever taught how, and our minds wander faster than people speak. What that means, and four practical ways to listen better in customer conversations.
10 min read
Managing opportunities: identify, qualify, satisfy, solidify
A practical four-stage way to manage sales opportunities, from finding the right people to keeping customers long after the first sale, and what each stage asks of you.
11 min read
Open and closed questions: when to use each, and why it matters
Questions are the most powerful tool in any customer conversation. When to use open and closed questions, how to sequence them, and habits that quietly undermine conversations.
10 min read
