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My New Inc. Magazine Article: What Can Guns N’ Roses Teach Us About Management Theory?

Axl Rose is too strategic. Like many managers who get lost in pursuit of excellence, the Guns N’ Roses front man labored for 15 years producing the band’s sixth album, Chinese Democracy, to mixed reviews and sales. While the album did well Internationally, was all the time and effort worth the ROI? When recording began CD’s were popular. It was released to a world of Pandora,Spotify, and Rdio.

Conventional wisdom states that strategy is what matters. Managers devote an excessive amount of time developing, researching, and validating their strategy. But strategic development can also be a huge time drain. Companies get sucked into a strategy vortex and lose focus on their customer, culture, and their competition. Or they strategize too far out into the future, instead of maximizing the here and now. By the time their strategy is implemented, the market has moved elsewhere.

Those who are strategy-laden often ignore a real-world truth today. Strategy is tactics—and tactics are strategy. The Great Recession forced many corporations to throw out the old rules and experiment. And many built sales and strengthened their strategies through tactical execution. Let’s look at three examples. (Read more of my Inc. Magazine article )

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