Dave's Blog - Page 2 of 67 - Wakeman Consulting Group

Premium Seating’s Consistency Problem

How to fill seats when the buzz wears off Walk into any new or renovated arena. Premium seating…as far as the eye can see. Capital One Arena: 4,500 new premium seats. FC Barcelona: tripling Camp Nou’s hospitality inventory. The trend is everywhere. The real problem isn’t building the seats. It’s filling them. Consistently. The first […]

The Three Mirages: Why Organizations Chase the Wrong Targets

There’s a feeling we are all familiar with. Working hard. Growing. Adding clients. Opening offices. Can’t quite keep up. But something feels off. Like you are chasing something elusive. Likely a mirage…I’ve identified three that seduce more organizations than anything else. The Money Mirage: “Growth” becomes “success.” Revenue. Headcount. New markets. New offices. Measurable. Addictive. […]

The “Most Feared” Law Firm Wants to Be Liked…That’s a Strategy Problem.

Quinn Emanuel, the “most feared” litigation firm, is considering a rebrand? In the UK. A new logo?A softer image? A different position? The headlines call it a brand problem. The headlines are wrong. This is a strategy problem wearing a marketing costume. But Quinn Emanuel isn’t alone. Across the legal industry, firms are drifting. Chasing […]

The Focusing Question

You know the feeling. You are stuck. Something needs to change. But every option feels important. So…you do nothing. That’s the Confidence Gap. You know what to do. But you hesitate anyway. There is a way out. It begins with one simple question. The Focusing Question This is the question that frames the work you […]

The Extraction Economy vs. Value Creating Organizations

Everyone seems to feel like the economy is broken. No hiring. Job losses. Everything costs more. Tough times all around. I have a name for what’s broken. The Extraction Economy. This is the system where insiders design the rules to capture value created by outsiders. Opacity, asymmetry, short-term optimization…all in service of building moats around […]

The Confidence Game

Why you know what to do…but don’t do it. Lately, we’ve been following a narrative arc. We started with CFA: Choice, Focus, Action. The operating system of strategy. We moved on to The Strategy Stack. Five questions every organization must answer to act effectively. Last we, I gave you The Strategic Health Scorecard. A diagnostic […]

Trading One Risk for Another

The Fed is proposing new rules to allow big banks to hold billions less in capital. The reason? To keep lending from migrating to private credit. Interesting timing. Private credit is having a moment. Blue Owl halted redemptions. Western Alliance is suing Jefferies. Investors are nervous. So…the plan is to make banks safer by…letting them […]