ConnectOS

ReadOS / Business

Strategy and Competitive Advantage — Part 1

How businesses choose markets, build a position and make durable strategic decisions.

24 chapters · About 250 minutes · Free to read

Start reading →
KEVOS / READOSBUSINESSStrategy andCompetitiveAdvantage — Part 1READOS COLLECTION

Contents

  1. 01A daily coaching diary for business owners: goal statements, focused learning, the main thing and daily reviewA practical daily routine for owners: a monthly goal statement, an hour of focused learning, main thing before firefighting, a ten-minute review, gratitude and a 90-day start.
  2. 02A signature is not the whole story: pressure, influence, mistakes and misleading statementsA signed contract can still be challenged if consent was impaired or claims were misleading. How to govern sales claims, check key facts, handle dependency and spot pressure before signing.
  3. 03A tender response is a decision package: making your capability easy to evaluateBuyers score tenders against their own criteria, not your brochure. How to structure a response around compliance, evidence, delivery, price and risk, and when to decide not to bid.
  4. 04Adaptability at work: cognitive, emotional and dispositional flexibility, and how to build themWhy adaptability matters more as work changes, the three kinds of flexibility, practical ways to build them, and how to interpret setbacks so they lead to useful action.
  5. 05Approved supplier lists: what they really measure, and how to keep the shortlist worth choosing fromThe careful part of buying chooses among suppliers already approved, yet that approval often decided the outcome years earlier. How to check what your list measures and keep it current.
  6. 06Avoiding burden shifting: why lower carbon is not automatically a better decisionOptimising one metric such as carbon can quietly worsen durability, other emissions, waste or cost. How to compare options per unit of function and make trade-offs explicit.
  7. 07Bad news early: how a business teaches people when to speak upPeople rarely hide problems. They wait, because raising them early costs them something. How to measure how late bad news reaches you and change the incentives that delay it.
  8. 08Before feasibility: deciding which ideas deserve a closer lookIdeas arrive constantly, and studying each one costs time and builds momentum. How to screen ideas cheaply, describe the need first and decide to proceed, reshape, test, defer or stop.
  9. 09Before you buy big equipment: planning the physical path from supplier to installationWhy a good price means little if equipment cannot be transported, received, stored, lifted, powered and installed when needed, and how to plan the whole delivery chain before you commit.
  10. 10Benefits move after approval: tracking erosion, surprises and dis-benefitsBenefits that justified a change rarely arrive as forecast. How to revise them honestly, claim new value fairly, give dis-benefits an owner and know when the remaining case no longer holds.
  11. 11Borrowing from PRINCE2 and PMBOK: what a small business can use from formal project methodsFormal project methods were built for large organisations, but their core ideas suit small firms. Which parts of PRINCE2 and the PMBOK Guide to borrow and how to keep them light.
  12. 12Building operational capability in layers: why cost and sustainability targets need a stable baseTargets for cost or sustainability fail when the operation beneath them is unstable. How the idea of cumulative capability helps sequence improvement in quality, reliability and flexibility.
  13. 13Building rapport that is real, not rehearsedRapport is the mutual understanding that makes honest conversation possible. Practical ways to build it, techniques that backfire, and how to know what to practise.
  14. 14Building self-confidence and a growth mindset: managing self-doubt, constructive self-talk and small stepsPractical ways to build self-confidence and a growth mindset at work: managing self-doubt, constructive self-talk, small steps, leaving comfort zones and learning from failure.
  15. 15Business model patterns from a wave of fast-growing start-ups, and what small businesses can borrowTwelve start-up business model patterns, from digitising paper records to value-added platforms, local support and packaging innovation, with cautions and uses for small firms.
  16. 16Career planning with career anchors: knowing what drives you, assessing strengths and choosing the right employerPractical career planning: Schein's eight career anchors, a ten-point strengths self-assessment, nine questions for choosing an employer, and handling interviews and rejection.
  17. 17Choose your decision measures before the design: why criteria belong at the startMeasures applied after a design is chosen can only report on it. How to set technical, financial, environmental, stakeholder and risk measures early enough to shape the design.
  18. 18Choosing the right employer: researching a company, questions to ask and reading the offer before you signHow to judge a potential employer before accepting: the problem it solves, business model, culture, people, durability, role fit and career path, plus checking an Australian job offer.
  19. 19Choosing your value position: performance, relationship, emotion or price, and aligning every department behind itHow to decide what your business will be known for: four kinds of customer value, the price–quality map, why positioning needs separate brands, and how each department must change to deliver it.
  20. 20Core values, culture and business fundamentals: turning beliefs into everyday behaviourHow core values shape beliefs and culture, how to define and embed them, and the fundamentals they should support: honest customers, fair suppliers, family governance, teams and discipline.
  21. 21Decision rights before meetings: who can decide, redirect and stop, and why a chart of names is not enoughGovernance often starts with committees and charts. It works when everyone knows who can decide what, within what limits and on what evidence. How to map decision rights and cut delays.
  22. 22Delivered is not adopted: making a change stick after go-liveA new system or process can be live and still unused. How to define the behaviours a change depends on, measure adoption rather than training and catch the drift back to old habits.
  23. 23Design first or design and build? Deciding who should own the remaining design decisionsHow to choose between designing a project yourself before tendering and asking a contractor to design and build, by matching design authority with design responsibility.
  24. 24Designing change around what people lose: why the old way fights harder than the newLosses from change are specific, certain and immediate; gains are general and later. How to find what the current way gives people, redistribute certainty and read resistance as information.

All chapters preserve the original KEVOS Insights content. These topic-based reading collections are organised alphabetically; chapters may be read in any order.

← All books