The Most Important Investment I Made This Year Wasn’t in My Business.Over the past three decades, Proactive Worldwide has weathered more than its share of storms. We’ve navigated the 2008-2009 financial crisis, recessions, COVID, market disruptions, and countless shifts over the past 30 years in how companies buy intelligence and consulting services. Like many small businesses, we’ve learned that resilience isn’t a slogan. It’s a requirement.…
AI Knows What’s Been Written. Who’s Discovering What’s Next?A client recently asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “If AI can analyze everything that’s already known, who’s discovering what’s next?” I haven’t stopped thinking about that question since. Over the past few years, AI has transformed how organizations gather and analyze information. It can summarize reports, review earnings calls, analyze…
Before They Cut You!Last week, my friend and long-time professional colleague August Jackson, MBA shared the recent article where Shopify’s CEO says, “Staffers need to prove their jobs can’t be done by AI before asking for more headcount.” He then posted something that hit a nerve: “I am hearing from corporate CI leaders they are also being asked…
The Comfort TrapFor over 35 years, I’ve helped leadership teams anticipate competitors. New entrants. Pricing pressure. Product innovation. M&A threats. But the biggest risk rarely sits outside the building. It sits inside the executive conference room. It’s the comfort trap. Comfort feels earned. It feels rational. It feels stable. Strong results. Predictable growth. Solid margins. And slowly,…
Informing Is Nice. Influencing Wins.A few years ago, I was sitting in a conference room with a client, watching their intelligence team walk senior leadership through a beautifully crafted briefing. You know the kind. Tight storyline. Smart charts. Competitor moves clearly mapped. Opportunities highlighted. Risks flagged. Implications spelled out. At the end, one of the executives leaned back and…
30 Years. 30 Lessons.We recently celebrated Proactive Worldwide’s 30-year anniversary, and it made me pause in a way I haven’t in years. Milestones like this force you to look not just at what you built, but how you built it. I remembered the folding table that served as my first desk, the early years powered more by belief…
- The Sacrifice Paradox
What if the key to success isn’t doing more, but giving up the right things? We all live this paradox — making sacrifices without always thinking about or understanding which ones help us, which ones hurt us, and which might help or hurt others. I began working on my new book, The Sacrifice Paradox: How…
Culture Is the Hidden Edge in Competitive IntelligenceRecently, the Chicago Sun-Times named Proactive Worldwide one of the Top 25 Workplaces in Chicago in 2025! And while that headline is exciting, it means much more than an award or a press mention. Read the full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/g4HPQjsc To me, this recognition is about something deeper: it’s proof that the same mindset we…
Keeping Clients Happy, Teams SaneIf you run an internal competitive intelligence (CI) function or lead any professional services firm, you’ve probably felt the constant tug-of-war between keeping stakeholders thrilled and keeping your team intact. Your “clients” might be internal business units demanding fresh insights at lightning speed. In professional services, they’re external clients expecting you to deliver strategic brilliance…
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