How to get started in strategy (with 6 brilliant quotes)
Not going to lie, strategy is really hard.
Whether it’s in business, communications, marketing, social media or any other discipline.
There is a powerful amount of thinking involved, as well as research, discussion, negotiation, searching, testing, and doubting.
Strategy work pushes you to uncomfortable places, and while it is founded on evidence and analysis, it also requires a leap of faith into the unknown.
But you know what’s even harder than strategy? Operating without one.
So how do you get started? What do you do to become more strategic? Does it ever get easier?
For me, after years of happily making shit up as I went, I simply decided to become more strategic. It was a deliberate shift in mentality followed by lots of reading, thinking and - ultimately - practice.
I distinctly remember googling ‘strategy’, ‘business strategy’, ‘strategic leadership’, and ‘strategy versus tactics’, then carefully reading the definitions.
From there I read blogs and articles, bought ‘Good Strategy/Bad Strategy’, and tried to use what I learnt. That was how I started.
Years later and I’m still learning - strategy is a slippery ol’ fish and it has a knack of wriggling out of your grasp just when you think you’ve got hold of it.
But I’m also much more comfortable and confident talking and doing strategy, and have developed my own method and processes for getting to where I need to faster.
Crucially, I can now better analyse challenges and opportunities in a more strategic way, with more context, as well as articulate my reasoning in a way that people seem to appreciate.
Overall, in the context of my career, I’ve found that there is great value in this.
Seth Godin once wrote, “Once you begin, you are”. It’s a powerful statement that applies to strategy as much as anything. If you want to be more strategic, start doing strategy. If that means googling the word ‘strategy’ like I did, then I reckon that’s a good a place to start as any.
Below are six quotes on strategy that have helped guide or expand the way I think. I hope you find value in them, too.
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” - Michael Porter
“Strategy is problem solving, and it is best expressed relative to a particular challenge.” - Richard Rumelt
“Analysis gives you a high-resolution picture of a lie. Intuition gives you a low-resolution picture of the truth. For strategy, we need both.” - Alex M H Smith
“Organisation and culture are strategic issues. When they support the basic competitive position of the firm, they are a source of advantage. When they impede efficiency, change, and innovation, they become strategic issues. Grand statements about ‘our vision’ and ‘the Strategy for Growth’ that ignore festering organisational problems are part of the problem. Good strategic leadership should confront internal issues with the same vigour it uses to advance its external purposes.” - Richard Rumelt
“The hardest part of strategy is distilling broad intent into actions that can be taken now.” - Richard Rumelt
“The most important thing to recognise is that strategy will have angst associated with it. It’ll make you feel somewhat nervous, because as a manager chances are you’ve been taught you should do things that you can prove in advance. You can’t prove in advance that your strategy will succeed… In strategy, you have to say, if our theory is right about what we can do and how the market will react, this will position us in an excellent way. Just accept the fact that you can't be perfect on that, and you can't know for sure. And that is not being a bad manager. That is being a great leader because you're giving your organisation the chance to do something great.” - Roger Martin
Got any questions or comments? Email me at seamus@seamus.nz