How to do strategy for your own career

You’ll only really understand strategy when you understand this: It’s a universal pattern It’s not a piece of technical knowledge, it’s not something invented, it’s not super domain specific.  It’s basically about understanding how things (e.g. businesses) fit into wider systems (e.g. markets) in a healthy and harmonious way that benefits all parties. (Granted there […]

Three reasons great strategists think more about style than substance

“The world doesn’t reward the people with the best ideas. It rewards the people who are best at communicating ideas.” – David Perrell We all know that ideas (and strategies) are worth nothing, and execution is everything.  This is obvious, or should be anyway. But the notion above? This is more subtle, and I think […]

Three indisputable signs you have no strategy

The last person who should be the judge of whether you have a strategy is you. Everyone has a strategy in their head.  Or at least, something they vaguely label as “strategy”.  But that’s not where strategy lives, in your head.  Instead it lives “out there”.  In the fabric of the business, the minds of […]

What is “insight speed” and how do you get there?

In my consulting work with clients, I have two practices which I’ve come to realise are very unusual: I favour long meetings (2+ hours) over short I favour public meetings (cafe, bar, etc.) over private My typical client engagement is generally something like a 2.5 hour chit chat in a buzzy coffee shop or members’ […]

How to write and talk in a strategically powerful way

Pretty much every “strategy” I see looks something like this: Whether or not the example in this image is “trying” to be a strategy, the point still stands – the discipline, and indeed business in general, is polluted by a style of communication that actually obscures meaning rather than revealing it. I think we massively […]

The spiritual war between management and strategy

A running theme of this newsletter, and the “strategy industry” in general, is the continued inability for individuals and organisations to “get it”. Why is it so hard? What is the blocker that makes a fundamental business discipline (perhaps THE fundamental discipline), so bloody difficult to grasp?  Why does nobody know what it is?  Why […]

The (in)ability that leads to strategic breakthroughs

Let’s be honest: not everyone has the same aptitude for this stuff. Although my focus here is to make big bold strategy democratic, and accessible to everyone, there’s always going to come a moment when know-how breaks down, and personal ability takes over. That stuff can be trained partially, but not totally.  Ultimately some people […]

This is the best way to learn strategy, but most ignore it

If you want to learn a skill like strategy, there are lots of resources to help you do it: Books Courses Videos Newsletters Frameworks Podcasts Etc. These are all great, and I’d recommend anything you can get your hands on (especially if they’re by me *cough*). But there’s one problem with all that stuff. It’s […]

The Cybertruck is another strategic masterclass from Tesla

Sorry.  Here I am writing about Tesla again. I don’t even like Tesla!  But damn they just make for the cleanest strategic case studies, so I can’t help it. Elon Musk’s “secret masterplan” that got the company off the ground in the first place (and pretty much invented the electric car category) is basically the […]

How to 10x your strategy with one conversation

When you’re developing a strategy for your business, you know who the most helpful person is? It’s not your co-founder. It’s not your head of strategy. It’s not your head of marketing. It’s not your consultant. It’s not even your customer. No, the most helpful person – who nobody ever bothers to involve in the […]