by Mark Blackwell, Arkaro Especially in B2B companies, the product management function is key to profitable growth. Despite its importance, and obvious stepping stone to business leadership, the role is often misunderstood or poorly defined. Is it any wonder that product managers often feel poorly equipped to make the most…

Mark Blackwell, Arkaro Product Managers’ responsibilities cover the whole range of the product life cycle, including end of life deletion, often through SKU rationalisation efforts. Opportunities are all too often missed in this important activity. Leaders may call for a tidy up of the product portfolio because instincts, or past experience, suggests that…

Experience counts for successful change initiatives. Arkaro’s corporate veterans know the theory and have learned practice from experience. Garrett Forsythe & Mark Blackwell Every organization has a unique culture and way that work gets done. Within a large organization, there are often sub-cultures in businesses units and functions. When change initiatives are introduced by leaders, these cultural distinctives can be enablers or roadblocks towards achieving desired goals.

Mark Blackwell, Arkaro The solution is Throughput Accounting, but let’s understand why cost accounting approaches can distort understanding. The right tool for the right job It is important to know when to use a hammer and when to use a screwdriver. A screwdriver will have little impact on a nail. A hammer could be used on a screw, but unlikely to deliver the desired outcome! And so, it is with accounting systems…

The most common leadership failure is treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems (1) This failure is particularly true in strategy design and implementation as the discipline of strategy has not yet caught up to the needs of adaptive challenges. Understanding technical problems and adaptive challenges in a complex world Technical problems are those that can be solved…

Would you organise a dinner party with friends without checking on food preferences that might have changed, or competing events that might impact scheduling? Of course not, yet businesses do initiate innovation programmes without making similar checks, or as Rumelt [1] suggested “What’s really going on here?”, …

Mark Blackwell & Pete Compo Despite how much is written about strategy, and money spent on it, reports of chronic failures persist. Have you experienced any of the following problems with strategy? Preparation A yearly exercise of budgeting, goal setting, and market forecasts, mostly to satisfy the boss. Confusion among colleagues…

The business press is seemingly clear — we are now living in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous VUCA world (as if it was not before!) …

A common topic when listening to B2B clients is the challenge of understanding how to define the different roles of a product manager and a marketing manager and how they should work together within an organisation. Understanding the differences, and sometimes overlaps, is important to continue to move the organisation…