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Insightful articles and strategies for navigating change, enhancing resilience, and driving impactful decisions.

Tag: decision-making

Latest articles

Leadership Is Not About Being Nice

Richard Martin July 28, 2025 No Comments

Leadership today is often clouded by soft platitudes like kindness and empathy, but true leadership is not about being liked—it’s about accomplishing the mission through people. Effective leadership hinges on two core dimensions: task orientation and people orientation. To lead successfully, one must balance these aspects, ensuring clarity of purpose while engaging and connecting with the team. Leadership is a demanding role that requires strength, strategic clarity, and emotional intelligence. Discover why the essence of leadership lies in the disciplined pursuit of a mission and the people who drive it forward.

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Ten Principles for Seeing, Understanding, and Acting in a World of Noise

Richard Martin June 9, 2025 No Comments

Leaders are inundated with noise—data, opinions, and emotions—but strategic success hinges on clarity and understanding. Richard Martin, Chief Strategist at Alcera Consulting Inc., presents ten core principles designed to help leaders navigate volatility and uncertainty. Organized into three stages—SEE, UNDERSTAND, ACT—these principles serve as practical tools for discerning patterns, interpreting change, and taking disciplined action. Whether facing leadership transitions or geopolitical tensions, this framework empowers decision-makers to move strategically rather than react emotionally. Discover how to filter the noise and act with coherence in high-stakes environments.

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The Strategic Mindset: A Methodology of Understanding

Richard Martin April 10, 2025 No Comments

In an era marked by rapid change and polarization, clear strategic thinking is more essential—and more elusive—than ever. Richard Martin, Chief Strategist at Alcera Consulting Inc., presents a compelling methodology grounded in five principles of strategic thinking. From understanding before judging to embracing complexity, this approach encourages us to engage with the world as it is, not just as we wish it to be. Discover how to navigate uncertainty, respect deep beliefs, and make better decisions in a landscape of conflicting truths. Dive into the essence of Strategic Epistemology and transform your strategic mindset today.

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Beware Hair-Trigger Responses by Richard Martin (Canadian Defence Review April 2017)

Richard Martin October 17, 2017 No Comments

Here’s the link to my April 2017 column on Defence Leadership or download as PDF.

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Everything Depends on the Aim

Richard Martin August 27, 2017 No Comments

My purpose is to look at the structure and logic of the problem to show that the objective conditions and delineates the analysis of the problem, how it is resolved, and what are considered acceptable and unacceptable questions and factors for consideration, planning, and decision-making.

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Readiness and the Time Dimension

Richard Martin July 9, 2017 No Comments

Business leaders must constantly decide on how much time to devote to future planning versus present action. The needs of day-to-day management and decision-making tend to swamp us as leaders and managers. We get caught up in immediate, tactical issues, and lose sight of the bigger picture, where we are ultimately headed, and what we will do once they we there.

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Damn the Torpedoes! Full Steam Ahead!

Richard Martin June 11, 2017 No Comments

That’s a quote attributed to Admiral David Farragut of the Union Navy during a battle in the U.S. Civil War. It’s a great quote for anyone who believes you always have to drive at full speed to get to where you want to go. The problem is that it’s only good in special circumstances, usually when you’re backed into a corner and have no other alternative.

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The Great Winter Storm of March 2017 – An Example of Poor Readiness

Richard Martin March 19, 2017 No Comments

Well, we’ve just had our latest winter storm of the decade (or what it century?) in Eastern Canada. Among other events, Montreal’s roads were a scene of chaos and waiting, and waiting, and waiting….

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Improve Readiness Through Conflict

Richard Martin February 12, 2017 No Comments

Readiness depends on considering varied points of view, a range of scenarios, especially ones you don’t like or fear, and a willingness to look at the consequences, negative and positive, of your future decisions and actions. If you can count on the loyalty, integrity, and collegiality of your closest advisors and subordinates, then you have a great start on generating the range of understandings and options to propel your state of readiness to higher and more sustainable levels.

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Rolling Barrage

Richard Martin January 16, 2017 1 Comment

I’ve developed the following yearly planning framework as a cyclical process to offset future uncertainty and rapid change with regular performance assessments and updating of forecasts, assumptions, and decisions.

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Latest Articles

  • The Unbound Superpower and the Return of Hard Strategy
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