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Daisa Publishing Clarity Driven How to get it right when you cant know it all.
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June 7, 2025
From the introduction:
The author's premise is that making decisions is how business leaders add unique value. And yet, it's frightening, risky, and difficult to make decisions. This book is centred around how to find the necessary info to minimise risks, make those decisions, and move your business forward. The bottom line is to use your data.
He has insight into the entire life cycle of a business, and shares his wisdom freely. Some authors bamboozle with opaque language to feed their own ego, but not Jonathan; everything is clear and understandable. It's also illustrated with memorable stories, including made-up ones that made me laugh out loud (like The Cute Snail Chin Straps).
Though some of the topics could get quite technical, Jonathan's explicitly written this for the business manager. He's focused his discussion on the operational decision-making that managers need to understand, not on the technology details. This both makes the book far more valuable to the business manager who doesn't know a gigawham from a mugglebyte and extends its useful life, since the specific technology will change faster than the business operations being supported by it.
BUSINESS PLANS
"At its core, a business plan is simply a set of decisions with a corresponding set of assumptions." (from the book)
Cutting straight to the essence, Jonathan explains in one simple sentence why you might want to bother with a business plan - beyond "the bank requires one" or "it's just what you do," neither of which are good reasons (by themselves) to do anything, to me.
Then he explores the assumptions you might have, their strengths and limitations, and how to handle those.
DATA
Data is the lifeblood of your business. I'd never considered it explicitly before, but Jonathan's right when he observes that everything and everyone else in your business is replaceable - your premises, your employees, your products, you, all of it - except for your data.
He walks through different kinds of questions you might have, and how your data can help you with these. For example, "What effect did the last change you made to your marketing activity have on the timing of your next hire?"
I really like his take on choosing KPIs -- definitely include something related to your business' WHY.
COMMUNICATION
I have a friend who used to work in the NHS. She explained to me that every email is basically Reply All because everyone's covering themselves. From what I've heard, this is a big problem in larger organisations of every stripe.
Jonathan's step-by-step walk through of how an organisation can easily grow from one person or a small team to much larger without shifting its communication mindset explains what's gone wrong there. More importantly, it provides a blueprint for how to shift your communication mindset while you grow, so that by the time you have 100 or 1,000 employees, half or more of your staff time is not taken up reading emails from everyone else about minutiae they don't need to know or care about.
He also has a chapter explaining how to handle your business telephone as you grow, as well as on process automation. These both have realistic ups and downs explained quite clearly.
SOFTWARE, HARDWARE, AND SERVICES
Jonathan used to own an IT firm, which he tells us about in his business story early in the book. It really shows in this lengthy section. He goes into great detail on what a business manager wants to consider when choosing their computer software and hardware.
He has very firm opinions on the best choices for all small businesses in this domain. I'm not used to reading such forthright opinions in this sort of text (be it a book, a blog, etc) -- I'm much more used to seeing, "It depends." And to me, it does depend, and there are pros and cons to every solution; every manager/founder has to decide for themselves which pros/cons outweigh the others in their particular circumstance. This section could have been more rounded, with a bit more balance.
That said, it was really informative. Even though I know a fair bit of technical things, I still learned a good bit in this section. And the way it's presented, as information to help the manager make the operational decisions, not a discussion of specific tech, is really rare and unusual in this domain - so this is gold dust to the business manager who needs to make these decisions.
This section is really long (it's about half the book), but of course, your data lives in your software and on your hardware, so it's an essential base layer to getting the reports you need in order to help you make those decisions in your business that lead to growth. How horrible it would be if you'd paid no attention to the software and hardware, implemented everything else in the book, got in the rhythm of relying on your reports to make your strategic decisions, and then all your data went up in smoke!
Jonathan's treatment of this is great - he informs without talking down to the reader. Given the prevalence of data in every business, this section is essential reading for every mid- to senior-level manager, founder, etc.
*
The book has a brilliant message: that you can use your data to shift from being mired in the everyday work of your business and short-term decisions to thinking strategically and being able to make long-term plans and drive growth in your business.
It would be helped by summaries at the end of each chapter and an editor to help with some distracting grammatical mistakes. I wonder if two books would be better - one aimed at pre-launch businesses, and another aimed at established businesses - to make it a little easier for each to understand the implementation steps relevant to them.
Overall, though, it's well worth a read. Jonathan's straight talk is a brilliant antidote to business as usual. He makes concepts really easy to understand - even ones that are placed on a pedestal that's grown in height so much until they're completely misunderstood, like the business plan. He shows you how to use multi-level thinking to get ahead of short-termism and be able to drive growth. And he does it with touches of humour and humanity throughout. :-)
Who is this book for?
* If you planned for greatness but you're already as busy as you can possibly cope with
* If business growth just looks like more work for you
* If you're drowning in short term decisions
* If your management meetings are spent updating and discussing those updates
* If your business plan lies unread and neglected in a drawer somewhere
Then this book is for you.
The author's premise is that making decisions is how business leaders add unique value. And yet, it's frightening, risky, and difficult to make decisions. This book is centred around how to find the necessary info to minimise risks, make those decisions, and move your business forward. The bottom line is to use your data.
He has insight into the entire life cycle of a business, and shares his wisdom freely. Some authors bamboozle with opaque language to feed their own ego, but not Jonathan; everything is clear and understandable. It's also illustrated with memorable stories, including made-up ones that made me laugh out loud (like The Cute Snail Chin Straps).
Though some of the topics could get quite technical, Jonathan's explicitly written this for the business manager. He's focused his discussion on the operational decision-making that managers need to understand, not on the technology details. This both makes the book far more valuable to the business manager who doesn't know a gigawham from a mugglebyte and extends its useful life, since the specific technology will change faster than the business operations being supported by it.
BUSINESS PLANS
"At its core, a business plan is simply a set of decisions with a corresponding set of assumptions." (from the book)
Cutting straight to the essence, Jonathan explains in one simple sentence why you might want to bother with a business plan - beyond "the bank requires one" or "it's just what you do," neither of which are good reasons (by themselves) to do anything, to me.
Then he explores the assumptions you might have, their strengths and limitations, and how to handle those.
DATA
Data is the lifeblood of your business. I'd never considered it explicitly before, but Jonathan's right when he observes that everything and everyone else in your business is replaceable - your premises, your employees, your products, you, all of it - except for your data.
He walks through different kinds of questions you might have, and how your data can help you with these. For example, "What effect did the last change you made to your marketing activity have on the timing of your next hire?"
I really like his take on choosing KPIs -- definitely include something related to your business' WHY.
COMMUNICATION
I have a friend who used to work in the NHS. She explained to me that every email is basically Reply All because everyone's covering themselves. From what I've heard, this is a big problem in larger organisations of every stripe.
Jonathan's step-by-step walk through of how an organisation can easily grow from one person or a small team to much larger without shifting its communication mindset explains what's gone wrong there. More importantly, it provides a blueprint for how to shift your communication mindset while you grow, so that by the time you have 100 or 1,000 employees, half or more of your staff time is not taken up reading emails from everyone else about minutiae they don't need to know or care about.
He also has a chapter explaining how to handle your business telephone as you grow, as well as on process automation. These both have realistic ups and downs explained quite clearly.
SOFTWARE, HARDWARE, AND SERVICES
Jonathan used to own an IT firm, which he tells us about in his business story early in the book. It really shows in this lengthy section. He goes into great detail on what a business manager wants to consider when choosing their computer software and hardware.
He has very firm opinions on the best choices for all small businesses in this domain. I'm not used to reading such forthright opinions in this sort of text (be it a book, a blog, etc) -- I'm much more used to seeing, "It depends." And to me, it does depend, and there are pros and cons to every solution; every manager/founder has to decide for themselves which pros/cons outweigh the others in their particular circumstance. This section could have been more rounded, with a bit more balance.
That said, it was really informative. Even though I know a fair bit of technical things, I still learned a good bit in this section. And the way it's presented, as information to help the manager make the operational decisions, not a discussion of specific tech, is really rare and unusual in this domain - so this is gold dust to the business manager who needs to make these decisions.
This section is really long (it's about half the book), but of course, your data lives in your software and on your hardware, so it's an essential base layer to getting the reports you need in order to help you make those decisions in your business that lead to growth. How horrible it would be if you'd paid no attention to the software and hardware, implemented everything else in the book, got in the rhythm of relying on your reports to make your strategic decisions, and then all your data went up in smoke!
Jonathan's treatment of this is great - he informs without talking down to the reader. Given the prevalence of data in every business, this section is essential reading for every mid- to senior-level manager, founder, etc.
*
The book has a brilliant message: that you can use your data to shift from being mired in the everyday work of your business and short-term decisions to thinking strategically and being able to make long-term plans and drive growth in your business.
It would be helped by summaries at the end of each chapter and an editor to help with some distracting grammatical mistakes. I wonder if two books would be better - one aimed at pre-launch businesses, and another aimed at established businesses - to make it a little easier for each to understand the implementation steps relevant to them.
Overall, though, it's well worth a read. Jonathan's straight talk is a brilliant antidote to business as usual. He makes concepts really easy to understand - even ones that are placed on a pedestal that's grown in height so much until they're completely misunderstood, like the business plan. He shows you how to use multi-level thinking to get ahead of short-termism and be able to drive growth. And he does it with touches of humour and humanity throughout. :-)
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