Leading Blog

AUGUST 30, 2023

T HERE IS danger when success goes to a leader’s head. When this happens, they are at risk for what Donald Sull calls in Revival of the Fittest , active inertia. King Solomon wrote, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

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Lead Change Blog

DECEMBER 10, 2014

If ignored or met with intolerance or indifference, these dissimilarities can be divisive, even lethal for career or business success. Professor Donald Sull calls it active inertia, an organization’s tendency to follow established patterns of behavior.

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Skip Prichard

JUNE 28, 2019

This easily leads to miscommunication, misunderstanding and misalignment (from the start) about what the problem is, what success looks like, why it matters, and what’s at stake. Apply these 8 key success factors for execution in the complex domain. ” The Power of Questions. Now, how do leaders sustain execution on all three?

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Harvard Business Review

MAY 23, 2017

The truth is, achieving the best outcomes — job satisfaction, meaningful relationships, successful ventures — requires shedding our shoulds. It can be incredibly persuasive, to the point of pushing us to do things we wouldn’t otherwise choose, but it doesn’t always lead to success or happiness.

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Harvard Business Review

JULY 22, 2015

Puzzling anecdotes abound: Microsoft has missed out on a series of new products in the past decade, yet as Don Sull points out , it continues to be highly profitable. Taking a cue from Don Sull, we can distinguish between two types of competition. In a competitive economy you tend to get lots of little, focused companies.

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Sull Competitive Advantage Porter Industry 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 13, 2014

I spoke with contributor Don Sull , who teaches strategy at MIT and the London Business School, about the tension between scholars who put sustainable competitive advantage at the center of strategy and those who argue that some industries are changing too quickly to allow for sustained performance. A good chunk of the economy runs this way.

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Sull Competitive Advantage Porter Innovation 14

Harvard Business Review

MAY 12, 2015

As recently as March 2015, for instance, Rebecca Homkes and Don and Charles Sull said in “ Why Strategy Execution Unravels – and What to Do About it ”: “Since Michael Porter’s seminal work in the 1980s we have had a clear and widely accepted definition of what strategy is.”

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