We’ve written before about decisiveness, the skill of being able to make decisions quickly, particularly in an environment of uncertainty and obviously incomplete information. Recognizing that not only will you never have access to complete information that is also completely reliable is just one piece of the puzzle. You also have to recognize that delaying…
In both my past as a corporate lawyer and as a strategic advisor, I often find myself drawing deal diagrams for a variety of parties. Even among those familiar with deal diagrams, I have not found any great uniformity in the choice of shapes; most people go with rectangles all around. However, having been in…
For some time now, we’ve been working with a senior retired banker from Lazard who is on our board of advisers. We essentially hired him to be our boss, in terms of helping us with strategic decisions, setting priorities, and gaining perspective on events that would help us make better decisions. Mr. P has a…
When we start discussing our heavy usage of weighted averages with customers, we sometimes get a questioning look, until we make the analysis more concrete for them. People are very familiar with using averages; equity analysts regularly look at numbers such as Days of Sales Outstanding that are composite numbers for an entire company. Very…