Strategy

The Opportunity Quality / Execution Quadrant

One thing they drill into your head in business school is how to make everything a quadrant. While I don't know for sure if it started with the famous BCG matrix -- which groups business into dogs, cash cows, stars, and question-marks -- I'd bet that the BCG matrix played a big part in initiating the quad-thinking movement.

I've been toying with a quadrant lately that compares businesses based o

n the quality of the opportunity they pursue and how well they execute against that opportunity. I rate execution from clownish ("Inspector Clouseau") to flawless ("Swiss Watch"). I rate opportunity quality from difficult ("Hardscrabble") to easy ("Fertile").

When I built the quadrant, I decided to try and place a few companies at which I've worked during my career on it. (I thought about trying to place MarkLogic, but decided against it for a number of reasons.)

Please let me know what you think of my model, what you think of my placements, and what other companies you'd place where on this diagram. In addition, if anyone has clever names for the four quadrants themselves, I'd love to hear them.

Audio From My Exit Five CMO Leadership Retreat Presentation

Just a quick post to highlight that Exit Five has published the audio from my presentation at their recent leadership retreat. The presentation was entitled How To Be the CMO Everyone Wants To Work With, and the audio is about an hour long. Exit Five founder Dave Gerhardt published it

On the Socially Acceptable Use of AI in Business

There's a question I've been mulling for a while now, and I think it's time to write it down: when is it okay to use generative AI in a given business context, and when does it cross a line? I'll focus on

The Odd Little Book All Founders Should Read On Selling Their Company

I recently read The Magic Box Paradigm by Ezra Roizen. It's self-published, was first released in 2016 [1] , and you won't find it on most startup reading lists. The writing is uneven and inconsistent. The metaphors are weird. There are too many TLAs (three-letter acronyms). Nevertheless,

Be the CMO Everyone Wants to Work With

I'm a big fan of Dave Gerhardt and the Exit Five marketing community he has built. While I have always liked the idea of peer-networking communities, I think they change from vitamin to painkiller in times of rapid change. Why? Because the playbooks haven't been written

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Audio From My Exit Five CMO Leadership Retreat Presentation

On the Socially Acceptable Use of AI in Business

The Odd Little Book All Founders Should Read On Selling Their Company

Be the CMO Everyone Wants to Work With