Quick one this week – once again I bring you three founder-friendly links that got my attention, spanning proposition, business development and organisational design. Grab a coffee, take 15 mins and read on. It’s worth your time, I promise.
Have a great week.
best regards,
-sw
RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1
The positioning carousel
Robin Bonn examines why agency positioning exercises fail – he explains the costly cycle where agencies spend months crafting superficial statements that lack clear vision, purpose or target audience. Despite involving talented people these exercises usually produce forgettable word salad that tries to appeal to everyone whilst not differentiating the agency at all. Robin highlights the fundamental contradiction: agencies present their positioning as deeply held beliefs yet abandon it far too easily when it suits.
My take:
Robin’s a genius at this stuff. I love our regular conversations and always come away with a new perspective or an assumption challenged. While his article is about agencies, there’s relevant learning here for founders beyond agency-land who often tackle positioning alone or with their closest team – which often means they lack the deep expertise in thinking about positioning that’s needed to achieve genuine differentiation.
RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2
Let’s start from scratch: organisational design in the age of AI
Jurgen Appelo introduces a framework for designing teams in the AI era. Traditional organisational models were created before AI integration became a big del, making them increasingly outdated for today’s hybrid workplaces. Jurgen’s approach builds on systems thinking principles, identifying five essential functions any viable organisation has to fulfil. A key point in this is recognising that while certain organisational functions are necessary for success, how they’re implemented remains flexible. This allows teams to distribute cognitive load appropriately, creating more adaptable structures suited to the AI era.
My take:
I do a lot of organisational design work and the impact of AI is something I’ve been researching a lot. There are new paradigms emerging around flow-based organisational design that are AI-native, so when I read Jurgen’s article it reinforced some of the experimental thinking I’d been doing on what this all means in practice.
RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3
You only need to engage 50 people (the magic of micro ABM)
Richard Millington gives us a nice practical approach to Account-Based Marketing (ABM), arguing you only need to engage with 50 key people to build a successful consulting practice or small agency (although this is also applicable to most B2B sales contexts). Rather than “spray and pray” marketing, his approach involves identifying 10 target organisations and mapping 5 key contacts within each. It’s all about relationship-building through collaboration, research calls and genuine value exchange rather than direct selling.
My take:
A lot of the stuff online about ABM is too big and systems-centric for founders. I liked Richard’s piece as it’s a realistic approach that most founders who are selling B2B can put into practice.
From the Build archive
Build #68 –
How to scale your selling without losing your soul
How to build a founder-inspired sales machine with guest author David Biden.
Build #64 –
Organisational design that actually works
How founders often approach structure backwards and what this means for the effectiveness of the businesses they create.
Build is Simon Wakeman’s newsletter for founders, ditching startup hype
to give you raw, practical wisdom about leading high growth businesses.
Simon helps founders navigate the transition from start-up to scale-up
through his work as a fractional COO, consultant COO, advisor and coach.
