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Leadership & Management

How to Run an Advisory Board that Delivers Real Value

Andrew Penny, November 4 2025

By now, you’ve recognised the value of an advisory board — and maybe even started building one. But there’s a trap here. Plenty of boards are created with purpose… and then slowly drift into “interesting conversations” that never quite lead anywhere. Good people, good intentions — but no

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Leadership & Management

How to Build an Advisory Board that Actually Works

Andrew Penny, October 28 2025

I was speaking with a business owner a while back who told me he had set up an advisory board. “We got together twice,” he said. “It didn’t really go anywhere.” I asked a few questions: He’s not alone. A lot of advisory boards are built with good intentions but never deliver real value — mostly because they’re never built to deliver value....

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Leadership & Management

Advisory Boards: Important But Not Urgent… Until It Is

Andrew Penny, October 21 2025

A while ago, I was catching up with the CEO of a mid-sized business. His business was growing steadily but wrestling with some underlying challenges. As we talked through a few of the issues, I asked whether he had ever considered forming an advisory board. His response was familiar:  “Absolutely, it’s something I know I need to do. Just not...

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Market Strategy

Most Go To Market Problems Don’t Start in Sales and Marketing

Andrew Penny, October 7 2025

I taught skiing on weekends for almost 40 years and one of the most powerful skills I developed was what is called ‘Detection and Correction”.  It’s the skill of identifying the symptom and then determining the root cause. Inexperienced instructors can spot the symptom—but rarely identify the root cause. A student may be skiing without flexing...

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Market Strategy

Who are YOU selling to? … Anyone with a pulse and money!

Andrew Penny, September 9 2025

Often, when I examine a company’s approach to sales, they want to dive right into fixing the symptoms. They want to discuss MQL, SQL, Conversion ratios, average contract value, and so on. Where I want to start is with strategy: How have you defined your perfect prospect? What are the problems that you might solve for them? What are the...

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Leadership & Management

Why Every Growth-Minded CEO Needs a Strategy Coach

Andrew Penny, August 26 2025

Most CEOs I know don’t want a coach. At least, not in the traditional sense. They didn’t climb the mountain by asking for directions. They got there by figuring things out. By instinct. By guts. By doing. But here’s the thing: at a certain stage, figuring things out alone doesn’t cut it anymore. The stakes are higher, the terrain is unfamiliar,...

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Market Strategy

Message Decay

Andrew Penny, August 12 2025

Sometimes, the cause of falling revenue is obvious – a major client fails, a sales channel quits, input costs increase, a new competitor enters your market. But more often, the cause is really hard to pin down and it can be really frustrating. Far too often we leap to price (our competitor is undercutting us), or sales effort (let’s have a sales...

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Leadership & Management

Of Course We Value Innovation

Graham Birkenhead, August 5 2025

Talk to any manager in companies these days and you will hear things like: Leaders know that success in today’s business environment depends on adaptability, responsiveness, and the ability to learn faster than the competition. And that, in turn, requires people 'to think' - not just follow instructions, and

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Market Strategy

The Scale Up Gap(TM)

Andrew Penny, July 29 2025

Businesses survive and thrive for all sorts of reasons. Many of which are outside of our control. But many of them aren’t. There are strikingly few barriers to starting a business and consequently all sorts of dumb ideas, poorly executed, are attempted. As a result, only 10% of startups actually get into the

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Lean & Agile

Looking for More Time?

Graham Birkenhead, July 22 2025

When I run Lean or Continuous Improvement sessions, I often explain that around 70% of our daily activity doesn’t add any real value to what we’re trying to achieve. That figure rarely surprises anyone. In fact, when I ask people to guess, they often land somewhere around that number

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