Unchartered Territories

I was watching this interview of Gary Vaynerchuk yesterday. The last I watched one was years ago. The guy still got it, still gets it, still delivers more value in a 15min interview than most can 4h podcast. There’s a moment in the interview, where he says, in essence, taht his “big corporate clients” always […]

Challenges

The strategist faces many challenges. The challenge that comes with the necessary solitude required to for strategy to emerge. The challenge of constraints, or reality. The challenge of humility, when the strategist’s high agency meets with the systems in place. The challenge of findin a path, and the challenge of making others see that path, […]

Creating Space part.1

Any strategic initiative, ranging from terrain mapping, path finding, leverage points, or, more broadly, reality poking, will require space. The strategist needs space. Space to think, space to manoeuver. Space can be found in the solitude that strategic requires at first: finding space by delaying the moment strategic thinking is done in group. Creating space […]

Try Harder Strategy

When your strategy success relies on your organization “trying harder”, it is probably because you actually do not have a strategy. Or because you see a path your team is not seeing. Which is the same. You don’t have a strategy.

Lost in translation

You understand context, trade-offs, and constraints. You have a perspective. When the perspective turns into a path (from diagnostic to ambitions), you have a strategy. But as your original strategic vision and intent travel through the layers of your organization, they fragment. Seen through this lens, perhaps one challenge of an adaptive strategy is to […]

Embracing Friction – part 1

A few days ago, I saw a LinkedIn post about how AI could be used in the context of foresight and future studies, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this part: A plausible future for futures studies reduces the focus on the mechanical construction of scenarios, while the entire foresight process undergoes a […]

Closing The Gap

What if strategy is “simply” about closing the gap? Building a bridge between what is and what could be. Between constraints and opportunities. Between how we’re positioned and how the market actually perceives us. This might be the heart of the Strategist’s Paradox:We need the tension created by the gap to think strategically and do […]

Strategy and Terrain

When thinking about “positioning”, most of us knowledge workers are thinking in abstract terms. The position you are defending, or aiming for, is very likely to be a mental representation. I always try to link this concept to the word “terrain”. Maybe it is because my mother tongue is French, and it comes more naturally […]

No finish line

I was reminded of this ad this morning. No Finish Line is one my favorite ads ever. And it translates well to the field of strategy. Strategy as a complex collection of finite and infinite games. Note to self: re-read James P. Carse    

Baumard defining strategy

Here the full quote from Baumard on Strategy from his book “Le Vide Stratégique” with a few more bits from later in the book. His whole book can be considered a definition of strategy and an historical deconstruction of why strategy is so poorly understood and practiced nowadays. We no longer try to define reality. […]