Executive Summary: The Strategy Logic Chain Applied to Cities Most competitive strategies fail from a break in the logic connecting their essential elements. Companies pursue innovation, lower costs, and moats, yet these initiatives often fail to reinforce one another. The Strategy Logic Chain addresses this disconnect through six interconnected links: Value Proposition → Consumer Behavior (& Incentives) → Capability → Economic Drivers → […]

Authors’ Note: This is Step 2 of the six-step Strategy Logic Chain within the PILA Reasoning Stack (Problem, Insight, Logic, and Assumptions). Step 1, the Value Proposition, defines the value a company intends to create. This article asks whether customers will change their behavior to realize that value. Every year, companies launch products that are faster, cheaper, or more effective, […]

Building Brand Philippines Through Excellence, Execution, and Systems Every nation possesses a brand. A country brand is not created solely through government marketing campaigns, tourism slogans, or official state messaging. It is forged through what the world consistently experiences from a nation’s people, enterprises, and public institutions. Like any global enterprise, a nation competes in the international arena through its […]

On paper, companies are logically consistent: Yet execution still breaks down. Not randomly, but predictably. Because between strategy and behavior sits a force most organizations underestimate: Incentives determine what people actually do when no one is watching. And when incentives conflict with strategy, incentives always win. Here are ten points to consider:  1. The Real Architecture of Execution Every organization operates […]

When news broke that the United States government moved to close the $800 de minimisthreshold, the tariff-free customs exemption long leveraged by Chinese cross-border platforms Shein and Temu to ship direct-to-consumer parcels via air freight, industry observers treated it as a sudden geopolitical shock. But from a strategic auditing perspective, this outcome was not a surprise. It was a structural load […]

A Discovery in Shanghai Sometimes, the most meaningful strategic journeys begin with a simple question. During a visit to the Shanghai Museum, I walked through galleries filled with reminders of China’s extraordinary past: ancient bronze vessels, calligraphy, and artifacts that carried stories from civilizations that rose, flourished, and disappeared thousands of years ago. Then I saw something that made me […]

Series Note: This article serves as the final synthesis of my four-part series on the archetypes of organizational leadership failure. If the PILA Stack (the what) is our operating system for decision-making, the Resilience Stack (the who) is our framework for character-governance, ensuring the right person is in place to execute those decisions. Together, they form two sides of the same strategic coin that powers […]

In strategy, what you don’t know can hurt you. But what you “know” for sure, that just isn’t so, will kill you. When we apply the PILA (Problem, Insight, Logic, Assumptions) reasoning stack, we see that the foundation of many global FMCG strategies is where the rot begins. Organizations have replaced “examine and reflect” with a “present and assume” culture, […]

ER Rollan, CEO of Growsari and a winner of the 5th Mansmith Innovation Awards, has been transforming the micro-retail landscape in the Philippines. By leveraging technology, he empowers small sari-sari stores, streamlines distribution, and creates a scalable digital ecosystem. In this interview, he shares the assumptions he challenged, the pains he sought to solve, and how he turned innovation into […]

Imagine your leadership team sailing smoothly through calm waters, until an unexpected iceberg strikes. The forecasts were solid. The numbers were sound. Yet beneath the surface, something far more insidious was at play: distorted risk perception. That iceberg? Cognitive bias: sharp, hidden, and often unseen until it’s too late. Organizations rarely fail because of risks they saw coming. More often, […]

Josiah Go features the movers and shakers of the business world and writes about marketing, strategy, innovation, execution and entrepreneurship

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