Mini-MBA Part 3: What was never on the syllabus
This series argued that a general management programme changes three things: what you can compute yourself, what you stop trying to win, and which rooms you are credible in. Parts one…
Finance
12 min
What I am actually dealing with, written up while it is still fresh enough to be wrong. No frameworks, no recycled decks.
This series argued that a general management programme changes three things: what you can compute yourself, what you stop trying to win, and which rooms you are credible in. Parts one…
Part one of this series argued that a general management programme changes what you can compute yourself. Part two is the second change, which is harder and less flattering: what you…
A general management degree does not make you a better manager. It changes three specific things: what you can compute yourself, what you stop trying to win, and which rooms you…
West-European companies stall at recognisable altitudes: around €10 million in revenue, around €50 million, around €1 million EBITDA, at the first external capital round…
Belgium is heading into the largest ownership transfer in its economic history. Family businesses make up 84 per cent of all Belgian companies, more than one in three faces a transfer…
Since 1 January 2026, the EU's CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) is in its definitive phase: importers of steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen file…
Listed companies publish half-year results this month because the market forces them to look in the mirror. Private mid-market companies have no analyst call, so most boards turn…
The government wants to crack down on management companies because they cost the welfare state money. Partly true, and the fake ones deserve everything coming to them. But for real…
The conversation about European competitiveness is dominated by the diagnostic class – McKinsey, Bruegel, Draghi – who can describe the problem but cannot prescribe operator action…
Most SME risk registers protect nothing because they are designed as compliance artefacts, not as decision instruments. Real protection comes from three named techniques run as three…
Most European distributors absorbed the 2024 supply chain shocks, paid the freight bills, and quietly returned to a 2019 operating model. That is a structural mispricing of risk…
Most priority frameworks – Eisenhower, OKRs, RICE, OGSM, MoSCoW – fail not because they are wrong, but because they assume upstream work the leadership has not yet done. Real priority…
Most mid-market companies that stall between €5M and €20M revenue do not have a strategy problem; they have a structural one. The decision-making architecture that worked at €5M cannot…
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