When I did my MBA at Stern School of Business at New York University, the strategy courses were my favourite. The right strategy matters, and there are many ways to analyse your position and determine the right approach. Porter’s 5 forces, SWOT and other basic tools are certainly basic building blocks. More recently I have been using one page business plans – Lean Canvas, and AG Lafley’s Play to Win resources. In the end strategy is about clarity – the more clearly you see the truth of the battlefield in front of you and the more clearly you see the truth of your own strengths and weaknesses, the more clearly you will see your path.
The first tip – email or call me and let’s talk about building a winning strategy for your company.
You may want to reference the following sources to open up your thinking about strategy and purpose:
- Dr Tom McKaskill (drexit.net) has published a number of excellent books on selling your company.
- Lean Canvas (leanstack.com) will help you think purposefully about what your business really is. Anything that is not on the one page plan is by definition, *not* the business. It will help you and your team say no.
- Read Stratechery by Ben Thompson. His regular writings on strategy are second to none.
- A.G. Lafley was CEO of Proctor & Gamble. Twice. He wrote a book with a Harvard professor called ‘Playing to Win’. Its the best framework for creating good strategy that I know.
- Watch this video of Doug Palladini speaking at the CEO Summit about how they use the Playing to Win framework at VANS to define strategy. Great company, great speaker. You can get more here at Better by Design CEO Summit.
- Ben Anderson is CEO at Renaissance Leadership in San Francisco. He is the go to for recruiting leadership teams in the US, particularly in tech.
- If you want something practical but academic, then Kellogg on Strategy, by an old Professor of mine, Sonia Marciano at NYU Stern School of Business is good at showing you how to think about your strategy in a practical hands on way.
Reading all this information is good, but Doug Palladini makes the important point that it’s how you use these tools that gets you to a winning strategy. Don’t get caught up in the ‘boxes and lines’ as he says. Email or call me and I can help you put all this into focus.
Hoboken Consulting 