It turns out that operational excellence results from the pursuit of a certain form of knowledge and using metrics in business is about the pursuit of this knowledge. This is Part 3 of the Becoming Data Driven series, and the result of a deep dive into the field of Statistical Process Control.

The answer, like most things from Statistical Process Control, is more surprising and more obvious than you might think.

Two case studies of real world competitive advantage, followed by a question: was this a moat or not?

Most companies skimp on process improvement. But the surprising thing is that they do so not because they're bad or lazy — but because there are system dynamics that prevent them from doing so. We take a look at what those are.

Focus may be about saying no to good ideas, but it certainly doesn't mean doing one thing at a time. This is what focus looks like at an organisational level, told through the story of a business turnaround and the Marine Corps approach to war.

Competitive advantages in business that come from cultural differences tend to be counter-positioning, not process power. Why this is surprising, and why it matters.

The iPod marked Apple's first successful (albeit tentative) entry into consumer electronics, and laid the way for future products.

What a question about growth marketing tells us about expertise — and why expert-novice differences are so useful to probe if you're a practitioner.

If you read history for concept instantiations, then: a) how do you hunt for cases for each concept, and b) how do you identify new concepts from the history you read? We look at answers to both questions.

What we've learnt from creating a simple CFT case library for business.