Basically, a strategy is a set of actions designed to achieve a particular objective. It’s like a route designed to get you from Point A to Point B. A more interesting question is “what makes for a good strategy?” And for that, I subscribe to Richard Rumelt’s definition: a good strategy is a set of actions that is credible, coherent and focused on overcoming the biggest hurdle(s) in achieving a particular objective. (View Highlight)
• achieving a particular objective: it should be clear what success looks like.
• set of actions: there should be a concrete plan.
• credible and coherent: the plan should make sense and believably accomplish the objective. There should not be conflicting pieces of the plan.
• focused on overcoming the biggest hurdle(s): there should be a clear diagnosis of the biggest problem(s) to be solved, and the plan should focus resources towards overcoming those hurdles. (View Highlight)
Create alignment around what wild success looks like. (View Highlight)
Understand which problem you’re looking to solve for which group of people. (View Highlight)
Maybe you do. It isn’t hard to come up with a list, as there are a lot of problems. Traffic! Affordability! Safety! Pollution! Boredom! etc. (View Highlight)
Now here’s the hard part: what is the relative importance of each of those problems? Which ones matter a lot, and which matter a little? For whom do these problems matter? This leads us to the next few sub-bullets: (View Highlight)
Understanding the ecosystem around the problem. Problems don’t exist in a vacuum. There are likely many other people out there who are also obsessed with solving any given problem. How are they approaching it? What’s being done well and done poorly? Which groups of people are getting ignored? Where are the opportunities for a better approach? It’s silly to start inventing with a blank slate. Understanding a problem well means also understanding your competition, and understanding the systems around which this problem exists. Do your research — competitive analyses, jobs-to-be-done, audience segmentation, marketing sizing, etc. This work is what creates confidence in future ideas, and what gives us a framework to evaluate them. (View Highlight)
Understanding which problems suit your unique strengths and weaknesses. You can’t solve every problem equally well, so what problems can you solve better than anyone else? What are you or your team really good at, and what are your weaknesses? (View Highlight)
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. — The Art of War (View Highlight)
Except no. Time, energy, and attention are not free. Remember how a good strategy is focused? Focus is a strategic advantage that lets you move faster on what matters most. That’s why a tiny start-up with dozens of employees can win against a company of hundreds or thousands. The more your plans get watered down trying to do lots of things, the less likely you are to have a competitive advantage. Either X is more important, or Y is. (View Highlight)
I tell my team that when the discussion becomes “should we ship this mediocre thing, or should we spend additional time that we don’t have to make it better?” the battle has already been lost. The thing we failed to do weeks or months ago was cutting aggressively enough. Either this thing matters, in which case make it great — don’t make it mediocre. Or it doesn’t, in which case, don’t work on it in the first place. (View Highlight)
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs (View Highlight)
