Strategic Simplicity® #15

Most strategies fail because leaders optimize for harmony instead of truth.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects

I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Dad Jokes!

Dad jokes!

1. The person who invented the Ferris wheel never met the person who invented the merry-go-round. They traveled in different circles.

2. I went to school for magicians but failed the final exam. They were all trick questions.

3. I want to tell you about a girl who only eats plants. You probably have not heard of herbivore.

4. I heard on the news that some guy was stealing wheels off police cars. The police are working tirelessly to catch him.

5. My doctor told me I’m going deaf. That news was hard to hear.

6. A king and queen walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Sorry, you’re not 21.”

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Nintendo: Innovation and Pivoting

The three leading video game makers are Sony (Playstation), Microsoft (Xbox), and Nintendo (Switch).

Sony (founded 1946) and Microsoft (founded 1975) are tech companies that branched into gaming.

Nintendo, however, pivoted the other way.  Nintendo (founded 1889!) started as a gaming company, making playing cards, and then pivoted into tech.

You can see this in how the market views them.  Sony's and Microsoft's consoles are judged strong on hardware metrics, like the chips and RAM.   Nintendo is praised for their characters and the strengths of the storylines and gameplay.

It's not easy to innovate and stay relevant for more than a century in a field (gaming) that is driven by disruption and technology.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #14

Complexity isn’t a badge of honor. It’s the dumbest tax on earth and you’re paying for it with your career. I’m the refund. Praveen Puri President, Puri Consulting LLC Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #13

If you need consultants to ‘align stakeholders,’ you don’t have a transformation. You have a turf war. Praveen Puri President, Puri Consulting LLC Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #12

Every over-budget project starts with someone being too polite to challenge nonsense.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects

I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #11

Your transformation isn’t stuck because it’s hard. It’s stuck because no one is willing to say what’s obvious. Praveen Puri President, Puri Consulting LLC Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

AI Didn’t Break the Tech Industry. It’s Been Decades in The Making.

My Medium article on why AI alone isn't responsible for the broken tech industry, and hiring crisis.  It's part of a long, relentless devaluation and disempowerment of tech workers...

https://medium.com/@puriconsulting/ai-didnt-break-the-tech-industry-it-s-been-decades-in-the-making-f8d2bca6141e?sk=9da03fd915382cfb0ded54d8bd7a45d1

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #10

You don’t need more frameworks. You need one honest conversation that cuts through the BS.

Praveen Puri
President, Puri Consulting LLC
Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects
I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #9

Most executives don’t build strategies—they construct alibis.

Praveen Puri
President, Puri Consulting LLC
Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects
I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #8

Most executives over-engineer their future. I help them design one they can actually execute.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects

I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #7

AI won’t save your strategy. It’s busy writing haikus for middle managers. Ruthless focus, however, will make you untouchable.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects

I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

The Fourth Girl

What is the fourth girl doing?  Click "Show/Hide Answer" to see the answer.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

She's playing chess with Clarie. You can't play chess by yourself.

Strategic Simplicity® #6

If your team needs a ‘transformation office,’ it means you’ve already lost control.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects

I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #5

Big tech projects don’t crash—they suffocate under status updates while everyone lies that ‘we’re on track.’ I call the time of death early.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects

I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #4

Stuck transformation? Stop asking for more data and start thinking more clearly.

Praveen Puri
President, Puri Consulting LLC
Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects
I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #3

Simplicity isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a flamethrower. Your competitors are too scared to pick it up. Their funeral.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects

I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity #2

If your roadmap needs 80 slides, congratulations! You’ve already lost. I can explain mine on a bar napkin while you’re still finding the clicker.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects

I cut through strategic noise so leaders move faster.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® #1

Most tech transformations don’t fail from complexity—they fail from too many smart people adding noise. I eliminate the noise.

Praveen Puri

President, Puri Consulting LLC

Executive Advisor | Unsticking Complex Projects Fast

© 2025 Praveen Puri

An AI Artist Has The #1 Song This Week

“Walk My Walk” by Breaking Rust reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Country chart this week. The twist? Breaking Rust is an AI, not human, singer.

https://youtu.be/OU71XDWYeIk

© 2025 Praveen Puri

AI Disillusionment

A lot of articles these days are focusing on disillusionment with AI and reference the now-infamous MIT report.  But, from a historical perspective, this is nothing new and doesn't mean that AI itself will prove useless. All previous major inventions (electricity, cars, personal computers, the internet) had a time gap from when they came out, to when they achieved mainstream adoption. During these gaps, there were a lot of startups, a lot of experimenting, setbacks, and money lost.
I suspect the main reason is that, with all these technologies, for businesses to extract the maximum value, they have to make changes to their business processes and strategies. At first, they simply try to use the technology to speed up their existing processes, which weren't designed with the technology in mind. 

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Thanksgiving Humor

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Incredible Fact: Ford vs. Tesla Electric Cars

Today, I read something incredible (I added the bold):

Ford's CEO had an EV wake-up call after tearing apart cars from Tesla and its rivals in China.

Speaking on an upcoming episode of the "Office Hours: Business Edition" podcast, Jim Farley said the "shocking" realization of how far ahead Elon Musk's automaker and China's EV upstarts were pushed him to overhaul the company.

The Detroit executive said Ford's Mustang Mach-E had around 1.6km more electrical wiring than the Tesla, adding extra weight to the car and requiring a much bigger and more expensive battery.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

When Bots Edit Your Newspaper...

From today's Eric Zorn substack:

It will brighten your day to learn that page B-3 of the weekend print edition of the Wall Street Journal referred to Netflix executive Cindy Holland as “Cindy the Netherlands.”

 The use of automated language police officers predates AI, and some of us are still amused to recall how a program installed on the OneNewsNowwebsite of the conservative American Family Association (now American Family News) changed the name of U.S. sprinter Tyson Gay to “Tyson Homosexual” in its coverage of the 2008 Olympic trials.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

AI Datacenter Craze: Now This is How you Flip Property

These developers bought the CBOE building in downtown Chicago for $12 million in June 2024, with the idea of turning it into a datacenter. 

They were smart, visionary,  and secured more power from Com Ed by applying for a long term deal three years ago, when they were still negotiating for the building, and just before the current AI datacenter craze.

Since everyone wants data centers, it’s now a long process to secure power contracts, so they increased the value of the property. 

Now, they flipped the building to another company that wants to build a datacenter for $40 million!

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/commercial-real-estate/former-cboe-hq-lasalle-street-sold-data-center-firm?share-code=17613393242971665-19a1821474e&utm_id=gfta-ur-251024

© 2025 Praveen Puri

The Two Unwritten Rules of Life

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Disinterested vs. Uninterested

I subscribe to the substack of Eric Zorn, former Chicago Tribune columnist.  

In today's issue, one of the items was a language criticism of a recent Chicago Tribune editorial:

 

the Editorial Board seems either not to know or not to care that “disinterested” is not a synonym for “uninterested,” which is plainly the concept they were going for.

An uninterested person is bored, unconcerned, or indifferent; and a disinterested person is impartial, unbiased, or has no stake in the outcome.

You want the referee of your game to be disinterested. You don’t want the referee to have a bet on the game. As another example, if you’re on trial, you want a disinterested judge.

Here’s how to use these words according to the traditional rules:

Squiggly was uninterested in the Super Bowl. Instead, he was looking forward to the Puppy Bowl.

The ex-wife can hardly be considered a disinterested party in the estate sale.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

That Pumpkin Spice Time of Year...

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Book Ban?

© 2025 Praveen Puri

One of The Guys Quit?

© 2025 Praveen Puri

When I was 8

 

"Vaping"

 

New Amazon AI Ad Tool = User Simplicity

I recently read in the Wall Street Journal that Amazon created an AI chatbot-style tool, based on it's Amazon Creative Studio, to allow SMBs, who can't afford their own ad agencies,  to create their own Amazon ad campaigns.

This is an example of User Simplicity (the "U" in my Strategic Simplicity® CLOUD Framework).

Amazon isn't in the design software business, like Adobe or Figma.  But, by creating a free alternative, tailor-made for ad campaigns on Amazon, they have made life easier and convenient for their customers. This will result in their advertising customers doing more business with them, and make them less likely to switch their advertising to other platforms.

If you also want to use technology / software to successfully win over your customers and/or build value for your organization, contact me, and I can help you benefit from my Strategic Simplicity® CLOUD Framework.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Detailed Case Study

I just added a detailed case study of my latest engagement to my website:

https://www.puriconsulting.com/#detailed-case-study

Client: A fintech CIO facing a $5M AI project with scope creep and delays.
Challenge: The project is over budget, behind schedule, and struggling with unclear priorities, vendor coordination issues, and low user adoption.
Engagement: A 3-month strategic advisory engagement using the Strategic Simplicity® CLOUD Framework to simplify the project, align it with business goals, and deliver results.

This expanded version covers much greater information than my other, abbreviated case studies, and goes in depth on the methodologies and interventions used, along with their results.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Gene Pool

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Big LLM, Small LLM

What if we trained small #LLMs, that are experts in one small tight, domain and don't require a lot of resources to run?

But they have the ability to remotely pass other questions back and forth to a more general LLM?

For example, what if there was an LLM trained specifically for your car as a "concierge", such as controlling the media player, air conditioning, seats, mirrors, etc. through human language? It could run on a few chips through your car, and be powered by the battery.

Then, if you suddenly asked a question on Nietzschean philosophy, the little LLM will remotely pass it along to a "big brother", like Chat GPT, in the cloud, and then relate the returned answer.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Gotta Keep Up With Technology

© 2025 Praveen Puri

China, Energy, and AI

I was reading an article in the Economist that, because China is adding lots of electrical capacity (both renewable and non-renewable), they are positioned to have a long-term advantage in AI.  Already their electric grid has more spare capacity than ours and AI, as it's improving and doing more "deep thinking", has a voracious appetite for energy.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Medical Statistics Puzzle

A study asked a group of doctors this basic #statistics question, and most got it wrong: A rare disease affects 1 out of 1000 people, and the test to detect it has a false positive rate of 5%. If someone tests positive, what is the chance that they actually have the disease?

Can you guess the correct answer?

(To view the answer, just click on the "Show/Hide Answer button" below)

© 2025 Praveen Puri

The answer is less than 2%. With 1000 people, there will be 1 person with the disease, and 50 false positives. That means a positive diagnosis would be 1/51 < 2%.