There's a wry piece of medical humour to the effect that "The operation was a success, but the patient died."In the military, they make a closely related point: No plan survives first contact with the enemy. They use the reminder Read More

Andrew shares some amusing examples of how extremely intelligent professionals can make wildly inaccurate predictions. Given that clairvoyance is clearly a rare skill, what are the lessons for leaders attempting to plot their course into an uncertain future? Read More

by Andrew Bass  |  "How To's", Blog, Managing Uncertainty, Strategy

Although I like my writing to stay pragmatic and jargon-free, much of my reading is anything but: there’s masses of useful stuff in disciplines far away from “management” that hasn’t yet been translated or transferred. So, I was reading a Read More

by Andrew Bass  |  Blog, Managing Uncertainty, Strategy

I once wrote an article in which I extolled the way Tesco scoped out the US market when planning the launch of their Fresh & Easy stores. I talked about the fact that they had executives hang out with families and learn Read More

by Andrew Bass  |  Blog, Managing Uncertainty, Strategy

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” So said Edmund Burke (and, in an adapted form, George Santayana). The idea that knowing what happened before will tell you what will happen next time is, I suppose, the Read More