Strategy that survives contact with reality

Dashboards with forty metrics create the illusion of control while hiding what actually matters. A critical success factor is a number that, if moved, disproportionately moves the whole business — profitability, error rate, customer acquisition cost, repeat purchase rate.

The discipline is choosing two or three, not twenty. Watching everything means truly watching nothing.

One durable approach to pricing splits the maximum retail price into thirds: roughly a third for the cost of making the product, a third for distribution and marketing to get it to the shelf, and the remaining third as the margin you protect.

The insight is discipline about the split staying fixed as a percentage, not as whatever's left over after other costs run wild. When margin is treated as a residual, expenses always expand to consume it.

Every strategic decision sits inside two environments: the internal one you control (team, cash, capability, culture) and the external one you don't (competitors, regulation, technology shifts, customer behaviour changes).

Strategy that ignores the internal environment produces plans your team can't execute. Strategy that ignores the external environment produces plans a competitor or a market shift can flatten. Both checks are non-negotiable before committing resources.