№ 103

Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italiano

Leaders change the world without a fight

1:56 reading - Military Strategy and Business Strategy. Small Giants guests at the upcoming STRTGY Meeting
CONDIVIDI
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp

Hey, for some people today will not be a great Monday.

I would have had many things to write about but nothing that cannot be postponed, after these 1000 pixels of symbolic silence.

This is not progress

When there is war there can be no progress. What is happening is clearly taking the world back to the past.

Today, any thoughts on strategy, marketing, and innovation may seem utterly superfluous to the events unfolding in these hours.

But there are small things each of us can do to change the world for the better,

starting with words.

Strategy often steals metaphors from the military field by helping to spread a misleading and dangerous vocabulary that in practice has little to do with the real dynamics of the market, competition and, above all, people.

I point you to this article by Roger Martin that addresses exactly this issue from which I take inspiration.

Simply using aggressive words to portray the market as a battlefield and employees as soldiers capable only of execution only shows that you do not know what you are talking about.

Even the philosophers of war did not like it all that much. Sun Tzu for example referred to war as “the supreme art of subduing the enemy without fighting.”

The moment you start fighting you are losing. True even (and especially) in business.

At times like these it is also right to stay focused on what you do best by serving those who already believe in you with even more energy.

STRTGY Meetings are important events for all of us at which to celebrate community victories and learn from those who are already changing the world for the better, such as the two guests at the next meeting to be held on March 14, 2022 at 6:30 p.m. (registration required).

We will meet Edoardo Imparato and Francesco Majno, founder of Small Giants, a company that produces sustainable, protein-packed, tasty snacks made with insect flour!

Edoardo and Francesco are two designers whose very ability to design innovative products that challenge the status quo and change people’s behaviors today has enabled them to bring profit and purpose into harmony.

It will be a conversation that will allow everyone to open their minds and transfer the amazing ways in which design meets entrepreneurship operates to their own industry.

I invite you to visit the revamped Events page at STRTGY and sign up for upcoming events.

I am waiting for you to change things together.

ALWAYS MAKE PROGRESS.

-Antonio

Don't miss the next Notes. Every Monday at 7:00 a.m. Free.

Tools and frameworks to unlock innovation in your company and apply Design Thinking, Blue Ocean Strategy, JTBD and OKRs in practice.

Continua a leggere

№ 252
del 9 November 2026
How to break through the growth plateau by investing in what increasingly separates the results curve from the investment curve.
№ 251
del 19 October 2026
How to make business growth repeatable? Let's reconstruct Bending Spoons' strategy with the Growth Machine: four effects, KPIs, and a workshop to focus the team's work on what matters.
№ 250
del 4 October 2026
How do you choose a North Star when managing multiple products? I'll reconstruct the metrics from Bending Spoons' apps and Operating Machine, with calculations and questions for your business.
№ 249
del 28 September 2026
I'm rebuilding Bending Spoons' Values, Vision, and Mission with MAKE PROGRESS®: from behaviors to choices regarding time, talent, and money. Plus, three questions to define a shared goal for your company.
№ 248
del 21 September 2026
In this first episode, we reconstruct the operating model with which the team integrates different companies and see how to apply the same control to your organization.
№ 247
del 7 September 2026
The world of AI has changed, but has your strategy? Four prompts to redesign the next 30 days.
№ 246
del 4 July 2026
Emails that generate emails, documents that generate documents, with us in the middle acting as relays. A four-quadrant matrix to understand where AI delivers real returns, where it's waste disguised as innovation, and which quadrant to start from.
№ 245
del 29 June 2026
AI isn’t just a tool for writing emails faster: it’s your exocortex, and your organization’s too. Today, success doesn’t come from knowing more, but from making better use of this second brain. Discover how HustleGPT and NetDragon show just how real all this already is—and how to put it into practice in your daily work.
№ 244
del 12 June 2026
SPECIAL EDITION - Even though they no longer get the car wash question wrong, you and your team are getting the same answer without realizing it. Micro OKRs are the lingua franca of execution, and MAKE PROGRESS® is the method that gives both the context they’re missing.
№ 243
del 9 June 2026
My first TEDx, and a phrase that has stuck with me ever since. At Harvard, someone said "fuck AI" and the room erupted. Other leaders were booed for the same ideas, others applauded for the opposite. The 150-year-old economic pact is breaking down, and the confirmation that AI will never correct weak leadership.
№ 242
del 2 June 2026
A month of silence to accelerate, Qonto and APIs, kids and how hard it is to grow today, augmented leadership, the Bassano del Grappa TedX and the end of the performance, Progress OS, the MCP method and the seventh cohort to become a MAKE PROGRESS® Progress Coach.
№ 241
del 20 April 2026
Better prompts, agents who make decisions, strategies that lose consistency, branding in the AI ​​era, stop being assholes. Signals to anticipate how the world is changing in terms of how we work, sell, and decide.