[HN Gopher] Why don't we have a strategy?
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Why don't we have a strategy?
Author : jger15
Score : 151 points
Date : 2022-07-14 11:20 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cutlefish.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cutlefish.substack.com)
| divan wrote:
| > The problem is that there are disincentives to thinking
| strategically.
|
| To me the problem was that nobody around could even explain what
| does it mean. It's such a vague word nowadays, and even when you
| really want to craft a strategy for your organization, you end up
| watching videos telling you to outline your values, write a
| mission statement and set SMART goals.
|
| Thanks to some coments on HN I've read "Good strategy/bad
| strategy" book, and a lot of things finally clicked. It gave a
| solid framework how to approach and how to think about strategy.
| Can't praise this book enough. I wish I was given this book at
| school.
|
| Back to the original thought - I think the problem is that we
| rarely see or hear what strategy really is about, let alone have
| a chance to learn how to "think strategically" for real. It's
| purely an education issue from my point of view.
| lumost wrote:
| The question is around scope, if you are building a strategy
| for yourself or your team - set smart goals. If you are
| building a strategy for an organization, then set KPIs. If you
| are building a strategy for a 100+ person organization, then
| you talk about vision.
| divan wrote:
| That's what I'm talking about - explanations like yours are
| abundant (no offence).
|
| Following your advice, let's say I set SMART goal for myself
| - "Increase number of books I read per month to 10 by the end
| of the year". It's specific, measurable, achievable, relevant
| and time-bound". It's still a goal, not a strategy.
| heymijo wrote:
| Any time strategy comes up I chuckle because it's Groundhog Day.
| Strategy discussions sometimes have no definition, sometimes lots
| of definitions, but never a shared definition.
|
| Strategy is conflated with vision or mission. People use the word
| as a noun, an adverb, and an adjective and all the while talking
| past each other.
|
| Its use across domains, history, and context all with different
| meanings make it rife for misunderstanding.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| The lack of shared definition is the thing.
| splittingTimes wrote:
| I am always missing good, positive examples of what are and _are
| not_ "Goals", "Stratgies", "Missions", "Visions", "Key Results"
| etc in those articles. And where to start from and where to go?
|
| What is a goal?
|
| "Win in the market place" or "Become profitable" No, that is not
| a real goal. That is pure business survival.
|
| "Increase market share by %X." or "Grow our portefolio to enter
| the premium segment" That sounds more like a goal to me.
|
| Then, agreed, a strategy is how you do that. Those layers are
| really important and who has ownership of those layers. For
| example, to me the lowest layer are concrete "actions". Those are
| better defined from the workers that are close to the production
| and less from management. A higher, more starting layer, are the
| "guiding principles" the company will follow.
|
| Example: "Grow portefolio". Two strategys how to do it. Either
| "Grow by aquesitions" (whole companies or external expertise) or
| you want to "Grow by in-house innovations". Those two "guiding
| layer" strategies will lead to wildly different action layers.
| laichzeit0 wrote:
| As Marc Andreessen said in a recent Joe Rogan podcast the goal
| of vision is to "form and reinforce the cult". You need to
| trick employees into believing in something. Cults and cult
| leaders are exceptional examples for corporations to learn
| from.
| dgb23 wrote:
| The quote from Richard Rumelt:
|
| > "A good strategy includes a set of coherent actions. They are
| not "implementation" details; they are the punch in the strategy.
| A strategy that fails to define a variety of plausible and
| feasible immediate actions is missing a critical component."
|
| Hints at something important. It is also assertive and
| convincing, dangerously so. Note that Rumelt is apparently smart
| and influential but also an academic.
|
| The good part is that strategy is layered and gradual. There's
| probably no clear semantic line where strategy stops and
| operations or tactics start. The thing he criticizes here is a
| strategy that is too vague and incomplete.
|
| The bad part is that he seems to fall into a very typical trap.
| The more concrete and detailed a strategy is, the more it bleeds
| into decisions that should not be made top down. A strategy that
| is too detailed fails to acknowledge the complexities of life and
| it dangerously assumes two things: Thinkers are smarter than they
| are, doers cannot make too many good ad-hoc decisions.
|
| It might sound very good in the ears of some thinkers and
| decision makers, because it inflates their ego. Be wary of that.
| It's a red flag. It also sounds nice because seems to remove risk
| and the human factor, with a perfect strategy, you might assume
| that people are interchangeable. It's simply not the case.
|
| A good strategy is simple and short enough so it can be taught in
| less than one hour or so and understood by everyone. The most
| efficient organizations, teams, armies, communities, groups etc.
| that have proven to succeed under the most adversity, pretty much
| all have rock solid, agreed upon core principles and plans that
| everyone executes dynamically in a decentralized fashion.
|
| Don't be fooled by 'too big to fail'-type oligopolies. They are
| often past the point where they need to do anything more than
| risk mitigation and value extraction. Anything else is just
| keeping people busy. Look at how people survive or win 'against
| all odds', especially if they can pull it off consistently and
| over long periods of time.
| pantulis wrote:
| You cannot escape strategy. Not having a strategy _is_ a
| strategy.
| nostromo95 wrote:
| > A high % of the people in your company primarily care about
| vision, goals, and priorities. To them, that is a strategy.
|
| Would be nice if the author defined what he thinks "strategy" is.
| It's not obvious to me that the above is not strategy.
|
| In general in business it seems the concept of strategy is
| whatever people need it to be in order for them to feel smarter
| than their coworkers.
| drewcoo wrote:
| "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are
| useless, but planning is indispensable."
|
| - Eisenhower, who, as Supreme Allied Commander and later
| President of the US, was responsible for strategy.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4083-in-preparing-for-battl...
| LaundroMat wrote:
| To me, this is too convoluted an explanation...
|
| Strategy implies making choices and trade-offs. Most people are
| afraid to be held accountable for making real choices (i.e.
| steering the company/product in one direction and not any other).
|
| That's why most strategies are only strategies by name: fluffy
| statements that anyone can fill in as they wish ("our strategy is
| to be our customers' partner") or monetary goals ("our strategy
| is to be 20% more profitable by end of next year").
| the_af wrote:
| I realize that this is a minor nitpick and I'm taking it out of
| context, but:
|
| > _The theory goes that ideas are cheap, and execution is
| everything._
|
| This isn't wrong. In fact, it seems more right than wrong. All
| people, all the time, think they have ideas, some even novel. Not
| many can carry them out in practice.
|
| I do agree with the article that the culture of celebrating
| mindless productivity is mistaken.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| >> The theory goes that ideas are cheap, and execution is
| everything.
|
| > This isn't wrong. In fact, it seems more right than wrong.
|
| I think the articles point is that somewhere between the
| "cheap" ideas and execution there is a place for strategy that
| is being neglected. Lots of people have ideas for social media
| platforms and lots of people execute on them. Only a few of
| the, often adhoc, strategies paid off and most have died.
| the_af wrote:
| Agreed, which is why I admitted the quote was taken out of
| context.
| tomlue wrote:
| Mostly agree, but this position creates a sense of
| helplessness. If all ideas are bad, then the idea doesn't
| matter, and I shouldn't waste time evaluating ideas.
|
| As an example, people w/ decades of experience in the domain of
| your idea can sometimes quickly invalidate it. Years of life
| can be saved by seeking that feedback, particularly when that
| knowledge is difficult to obtain.
| the_af wrote:
| Totally. Note I don't think "all ideas are bad", it's just
| that the actual execution is often more important, even for
| good ideas.
|
| The whole "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" thing :)
| pantulis wrote:
| Or put another way: you can execute, with the highest
| levels of excellence, a bad idea and fail the same.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| There a lots of startups who execute reasonably well against a
| crappy idea.
|
| Bad ideas are cheap. I'd argue that good ideas are rare and
| usually expensive - they come from a deep understanding of a
| confluence of things.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| A strategy is nothing more than repeated steps that provide you a
| certain outcome. If you don't get the outcome you desire, you
| change up your strategy until you do. Simple as that.
|
| Good strategy / Bad strategy covers this a bit further in more
| technical terms of a diagnosis, kernel, and coherent actions.
|
| Everyone has a strategy, even if you don't think so. Being aware
| and having enough clarity to communicate your strategy is another
| thing entirely in which I think this article is trying to point
| out.
|
| It feels a bit meta to talk about not having a strategy if you
| can't even define the word. Rumelt's definition is of a "good
| strategy". You can have bad strategies or no strategies too! I
| mean that was the other half of the book.
| quirkot wrote:
| An important point to add, I think, is that strategy is a set of
| plans for a future that is different than the present. And that
| is _hard_. Many people struggle with it, especially beyond the
| task level. That 's why so much of "strategy" is hand waving
| nonsense, because it is so difficult
| datavirtue wrote:
| The internal resistance to developing a strategy that you don't
| have the power to execute can be overwhelming.
| kriro wrote:
| I always have interesting discussions during job interviews when
| I answer the old "where do you see yourself in five years" or
| when discussing my non-linear/standard career path. I'm a bit of
| a fan of Mintzberg's view on strategy when it comes to career
| "planning" and technology companies (I'd recommend his book "Rise
| and Fall of Strategic Planning"). He uses a garden metaphor and
| basically says let everything grow and trim the weeds and his
| reasoning for this "dabble in different things" approach is that
| in a turbulent world, precise planning is not really feasible.
| It's basically more of a core competencies approach.
|
| Different situations require different approaches. There's also
| value in planning and tight operational execution in different
| domains. For tech...I feel like some overall "vision" and rough
| "roadmap" are good and then try different things and be quick to
| market with new ideas and willing to adapt.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > Different situations require different approaches.
|
| I very much agree. When it comes to developing a meaningful
| strategy, this depends largely on the details of what is at
| issue.
|
| Imagine some really demanding business idea that could perhaps
| be put into reality towards the end of this century, like
| astroid mining or a hotel on the moon. Does it already make
| sense to found a company, collect money and work on a strategy?
| If there are too many moving targets or the goal is just too
| large or too distant or demands too many ressources, there may
| not exist a feasible strategy, no matter how hard we think
| about one.
|
| At the other end of the spectrum think of some boring, but
| established business idea, like opening a restaurant or
| starting an organic farm. In this case, there exist thousands
| of role models to learn from. Success is not guaranteed, but
| one does not need to re-invent the wheel to outline a strategy
| and get started.
| jackthetab wrote:
| Interestingly enough -- well, to me, at least -- I came across
| this introductory video[1] last night from HBR about the
| differences between strategy and planning. It's piqued my
| interest enough to look more into it.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYlGRnC7J8&t=325s
| rambambram wrote:
| Thanks, that was educational to watch.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm a strategic thinker. I have been, almost my entire career. I
| write software that lasts _decades_ , and have authored systems
| that took ten years to mature.
|
| The issue is that I have almost never been _allowed_ to express,
| communicate, or implement my strategies.
|
| "Strategic thinking" is an ego thing. Only "big bosses" are
| "allowed" to "think strategically." If those of us, down in the
| trenches, "dare" to think strategically, we're being "uppity."
|
| What a nightmare. At my last company, I foresaw the problems that
| eventually resulted in the company falling down (and my team
| being made redundant), at least a decade in advance. I remember
| being called a "Cassandra," and also being told that it "wasn't
| specific enough."
|
| For example, when the iPhone first came out, I borrowed one of my
| employees' new iPhone, and took it up to Marketing. I said "This
| is gonna be trouble."
|
| I was laughed out of the office.
|
| Ten years later, the company's business was in shambles; almost
| entirely because smartphones ate their lunch. I remember hearing
| people whining about "How could we have foreseen this?"
|
| These days, I write software on my own. I don't have anyone
| telling me "Go away kid, yer bodderin' me."
|
| It's been working well.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I remember being called a "Cassandra,"
|
| It's off-topic, but, why do people throw that as if it's an
| offense? They are certainly not self-identifying as stupid ones
| that will refuse to see real problems.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Because it is meant as an offense. It is designed to make it
| plain that our input is not welcome.
|
| The whole idea is to belittle someone else, and stop them
| from coming to you, with their ideas.
|
| To be fair, there are people who get _waaaaayyyy_ too
| obsessed with "not a problems." I have worked with many of
| them, over the years. In fact, I just got off a video call
| with one that suggested that we scrap our entire, near-ship-
| ready app, because we are not sure how well it will scale for
| millions of users, and it is _highly_ doubtful that it will
| have more than a few thousand users, for the next three or
| four years.
|
| This is an app that has been under development for two years,
| and is looking _very_ good.
|
| I completely understand why what I said to Marketing was not
| received well. Part of it was practicality. Changing course
| is difficult, expensive, and risky. Even a high-level person
| would be crazy to do it on a whim.
|
| But the bigger part was ego. I know the people involved. In
| this community, tecchies are valued and listened to, but, if
| you are a small, technical team, in a marketing/sales/service
| company, you get used to being treated like Moss and Roy.
|
| What _is_ a good idea, though, is to evaluate who is bringing
| the news, and what it would take to start examining the
| issue. If my company had done that, then they would have been
| well-prepared.
|
| That's something that many companies are _spectacularly_ bad
| at.
|
| Instead, they stuck their fingers in their ears, and sang
| "La-la-la-I-can't-hear-you."
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| This doesn't read well. If you want to be heard, communication
| skills matter.
| vasco wrote:
| Ok, you walked into Marketing and said "This is gonna be
| trouble". What would happen next? Was the person looking at you
| even able to decide anything about what Marketing was working
| on? When you foresaw this huge danger to your employer, ten
| years in advance, you didn't keep mentioning it to people, or
| if change companies to somewhere that you know, you don't have
| the knowledge that is gonna fail for sure due to your
| foresight?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Was the person looking at you even able to decide anything
| about what Marketing was working on?_
|
| VP? Probably.
|
| _> When you foresaw this huge danger to your employer, ten
| years in advance, you didn 't keep mentioning it to people_
|
| It only takes a couple of slaps to make us shut up[0]. They
| didn't want to hear from me, so I stopped trying to tell them
| stuff. Simple.
|
| In this case, what I did, was start learning about the
| iPhone, and start doing coding on my own, once Apple allowed
| us into the system (They didn't actually publish the iOS API
| for a while). I actually wrote a number of apps that would
| have integrated our products with the iPhone, as the years
| went by, but ... you guessed it ... they were ignored. I
| considered them as practice.
|
| I remember once, one of my Japanese peers saying "You know, I
| sometimes see something, and say to myself 'Chris mentioned
| this, like three years ago.'." But he never listened to me,
| at the time I was mentioning that. In fact, even after
| telling me that, he _still_ refused to listen.
|
| I knew the company was being steered into the rocks, and was
| not allowed to help correct the course, so I spent my time,
| preparing a lifeboat. I don't have to justify to anyone, why
| I stuck around. If I have to explain, they wouldn't
| understand.
|
| Ego is a _powerful_ force. We will utterly destroy ourselves,
| in order to salve our own insecurities.
|
| _> change companies_
|
| That seems to be everyone's answer, these days. I guess I'm
| stupid. I have not found it an attractive choice.
|
| [0] _" A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or
| a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to
| death by a frown on the right person's brow."_
|
| -Charles Browder
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| If you told execs with 100% certainty that a problem would
| kill a company 10 years from now, many wouldn't care, even
| if they totally believed you.
|
| Most execs don't see themselves at that company in 10 years
| time, so that type of problem just doesn't register for
| them.
| sthatipamala wrote:
| People have said similar things about me as your Japanese
| peer. What follows is tough love for myself so take it for
| what its worth:
|
| If no one listens to me when I'm right, that's my problem,
| not theirs.
|
| Everyone has their own incentives and motivations. If my
| goal is to actually effect change, the onus is on me to
| translate my strategy into a plan that is executable by
| self-interested, messy human beings.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I don't consider that tough. I'm _much_ harder on myself
| than that.
|
| There were many factors to consider. Factor One, was that
| I am not Japanese. Even though I had a level of "insider
| trust," that is _very_ rare for westerners, I wasn 't
| "one of them."
|
| Second, if you are familiar with the way Japanese
| companies run, hierarchy is _crucial_. Once you are
| informed that your input is not welcome, you are expected
| to just shut up, and fall into line. Pick up a musket,
| and kneel on the front row. Even if you know you are
| doomed, you shut up and aim.
|
| This has caused _many_ problems. The Fukushima disaster
| was exacerbated by it.
|
| Another factor, was that I am not Marketing. "Staying in
| your wheelhouse" is something that is not unique to
| Japanese companies. The VP I mentioned was not Japanese.
| I was ignored, because I wasn't Marketing. I could have
| been an intern in Marketing, and I would have had more
| cred.
|
| And, of course, there's the old "It's not a problem, if
| we can't predict it 100%, ten years in advance," or "If
| you complain, you also need to have the solution."
|
| That second one is a killer. Many disastrously bad
| "solutions" come about, because the issue had not been
| explored enough, when the "solution" was presented.
|
| Sometimes, it is best to not have an answer, until you
| understand the question.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I suggest trying working with others as partner owners, instead
| of working in organizations of people who are compensated
| according to hours in seat
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This is true. I tried that, after the wheels came off my old
| company, but, you know, I also found out that us "olds"
| aren't particularly attractive in today's tech scene.
|
| It's OK. I just stopped trying to work for others, and have
| been quite happy, working with people that can't afford to
| pay me.
| olivierduval wrote:
| Strategy is about
|
| - vision: what will be the market in the next few years ? What
| products will be needed ? Who will be the competitor & how will
| they be positionned ? And what about subcontractor ? And chain of
| value ? And added value ?
|
| - execution preparation: what will be required in the next few
| years to complete to vision ? Maybe it's partnership, reorg, new
| products, integration, buy competitor... There may be some key
| milestone, like becoming first on a high visibility market before
| becoming first-to-third in a high value mid-market... Or becoming
| a reference for business before attacking the comsumer market...
| or becoming a reference supplier/subcontractor before producing
| with its own trademark...
|
| Then the tactic is how to execute the strategy. There you'll need
| roadmap, ressource allocation and such... but you already know
| where you want to be in the next few years and roughly the
| differents milestones to get there before starting to move
| k__ wrote:
| At least some people have a strategy, but not many, that's right.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardley_map
| throw0821374 wrote:
| I wonder what types of problems Wardley maps would create if
| everyone thought this way ?
|
| Relentless focus on where your work lies on the commodification
| spectrum, moving up the value chain, etc.
| agomez314 wrote:
| The author makes a good point that there are not enough
| incentives to think long and ponder - which can lead to better,
| more "thoughtful" ideas.
|
| I have found the following to be great incentives for quiet
| thinking:
|
| - No electronics in early morning and at night (~1hr before
| sleep)
|
| - Go on long runs without listening to music or podcasts
|
| - Write things down on a notebook
|
| - Do hobbies instead of scrolling through social media (i.e
| drawing, playing an instrument, exercising).
| __oh_es wrote:
| Does anybody have examples/links of strategy as it was released,
| thats also considered good quality?
| duxup wrote:
| I'm the guy who reads that article and all these comments and if
| I'm in the meeting where they talk about this I just politely nod
| and have no idea what anyone is talking about. Meanwhile I"m
| thinking we're not even talking about a strategy, we're talking
| about what "strategy" even is... or not and just talking past
| each other.
| mihaic wrote:
| Any sufficiently useful strategy to handle complexity needs to
| have some amount of ambiguity, which needs to be filled in by
| people with a minimum of life experience and good intentions.
|
| I've become more convinced in recent years that even a well
| thought out strategy can't be implemented by the average post-
| modernist cynical office workers, and the secret right now is
| identifying how you can have a highly robust strategy.
|
| Laws and incentives are not enough to build a society, they're
| just necessary. A culture with good values that also punishes
| bullshit/imorality seems to be required.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| > A culture with good values that also punishes
| bullshit/imorality seems to be required.
|
| CGP Grey coined an excellent term for these on his podcast,
| calling them "The Necessary Lies of Civilization."
| dchuk wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of "strategies" are just rigid
| sequences of time bound outputs/shit you want to build, that
| always end up being wrong and needing to change because of new
| information coming in.
|
| Strategy needs to be:
|
| - We've identified this deep problem in the world that needs to
| be fixed
|
| - We want to bring the Vision to life where that problem is gone
| (a big bold future state of the world).
|
| - We believe bringing this sequence (roadmap) of intermediate
| states of the world to life will get us to that vision.
|
| - These are the things we WONT do along the way. (Guiding policy)
|
| A roadmap unrolls your strategy into that sequence. A good
| roadmap item clearly lays out where you're trying to go without
| committing you to doing it in any particular way. <-- this is the
| most important principle you need to master to create good,
| proper roadmaps
|
| Most roadmaps are really a feature release plan. A roadmap should
| contain Futures, not Features.
|
| All of the above is uncomfortable at first and takes a lot of
| practice to get used to, so many just end up committing to a
| timeline of things to build that doesn't really add up to an
| actual strategy.
| tootie wrote:
| I think the problem is that strategy is hard and frequently
| requires divestment. Your head of inbound marketing isn't going
| to tell you the company strategy should switch to outbound
| marketing so let's cut my team in half and throw away
| everything I've built. My company is suffering this right now.
| We're doing annual roadmapping and it's entirely a program
| plan. Our business has shifted over the past 5 years and now
| there's a lot of initiatives being pitched to justify their
| department's existence.
| dchuk wrote:
| "Your head of inbound marketing isn't going to tell you the
| company strategy should switch to outbound marketing so let's
| cut my team in half and throw away everything I've built." 1)
| Some might, if they see other roles/opportunities for
| themselves in the event they do 2) Generally your example is
| a call their boss or another overarching leader would make,
| not someone within the system/strategy.
| tootie wrote:
| Yeah, my example is a bit reductive but some form of this
| happens pretty frequently. Especially when the high-level
| decision makers are relying on their reports to provide
| inputs to their strategy decisions.
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| If you think "strategy" involves following a simple one-size-
| fits-all cookbook recipe, you are very deep in the weeks. Sadly
| that's pretty much what most MBAs get from their MBA program.
| Rather than the true lessons.
|
| A lot of this is also easier if you are "present" in the now
| and the world. I don't meet many people who are either.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| A major component of a strategy is constraint. In other words,
| what are you going to give up? If you're going to do All The
| Things, that isn't a strategy, it's a wishlist. You have to
| bring constraints into the picture before anything like a
| strategy emerges.
| lordnacho wrote:
| This is exactly right, the most important thing that makes it
| a strategy is what we cut ourselves off from doing. If we're
| only hiring seniors, we don't get access to cheap graduates
| who can stay up all night. If we play a high line, we can't
| sit deep and wait for a counterattack.
|
| The basic thing that makes a plan a strategy is it stops you
| from doing "the everything". A constrained menu of actions
| can still contain variability but it reduces the scope for
| total chaos that happens when you try to do absolutely
| everything.
|
| It's quite possible that two opposing strategies can both
| work, but that allowing the team to do both at once will
| fail. That's called straddling. For example it's hard to
| appeal to exclusivity and the mass market at once, but
| businesses have done well doing one or the other.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I find the good strategy/bad strategy definition useful, which
| is essentially, an area of 'strength' as to be applied to an
| area of 'weakness' (put in quotes because I think weakness can
| be replaced with "opportunity" or similar words, but his point
| is that a good strategy should respect the specific skills of
| the business/team while also finding some unique space in the
| market those skills apply. Otherwise "visions" are just pipe
| dreams.
| clairity wrote:
| that's definitely a good heuristic for finding a strategy.
| strategies are realistic methods for _how_ you 'll achieve a
| goal without getting into the details of _what_ you will do
| to get there (that 's the plan). in chess, it might be
| "control the middle" (if you're strong positionally). in
| basketball, it might be "run and gun" (if your strength is
| endurance and speed).
|
| it's important to understand that strategy only exists
| relative to competition. thus a business strategy only exists
| at the level of a firm, and not a department or a product,
| because firms compete in markets (for which a firm may
| produce many products). that also means it doesn't make sense
| to talk about marketing strategy or product strategy, because
| those are implementation details of the firm's business
| strategy. further, firms only have two broad strategic
| options: differentiaton (compete on quality) or cost (compete
| on price). within that, they can apply their strengths to
| tailor their strategy to the firm (our proprietary
| manufacturing process produces much more consistent and
| precise tiddlybonks, so we'll compete on quality).
| brador wrote:
| Disagree. Short term - todo list, Mid term - features list,
| Long term - future milestones. All three together form your
| roadmap. All three guided by macro goals.
| mouzogu wrote:
| i agree, but think timelines are a practical necessity of
| business. this is why we get so much half-baked/unfinished
| stuff being released.
|
| and this is where the trade-offs happen that dilute or
| misdirect an otherwise sound roadmap/strategy. some exec needs
| shit done so he can present to his boss and get his nice bonus,
| then jump ship before they realise its a clusterf*ck.
| dchuk wrote:
| I don't disagree that timelines are important. However, here
| is the problem I consistently see:
|
| Wrong Way: Most roadmaps contain timelines that are "We're
| going to build this specific thing and we're estimating it's
| going to take this long" (Even worse is if they're
| specifically bucketed by quarters with strict cut offs).
| Isolated estimates of how long something will take will
| _always be wrong_ because it doesn 't account for all the
| work in the system and the trade offs that brings with it.
| Basic Lean theory at work.
|
| Right Way: "We're going to try and create this future state
| of the world, we'll know we're there as measured by x y z
| metrics, and we're going to budget this much time and this
| many resources to try and pull this off. Here's some high
| level ideas of how we can do this".
|
| When you roadmap in the second way, you can still provide the
| business a timeline, but:
|
| - You leave yourself the ability to pivot your approach along
| the way and still try and hit those measurables (futures not
| features, you want to be crystal clear about where you're
| trying to get without committing to how you're going to get
| there in any specific way)
|
| - You transition the evaluation of your results away from a
| boolean (did you build this thing or not), to a discrete
| measurable, _that still allows you to achieve some amount of
| success even if you didn 't completely hit the goal_ ("Our
| target was a 60% reduction in support calls, and we were able
| to reduce by 40%").
|
| I'd also argue that a kanban style roadmap (considering,
| planning, next, doing, done), is more than enough of a
| timeline even without dates, so long as each outcome seems
| reasonable enough to achieve in 2-4 month efforts. The reason
| why, is I can look at the right side of the roadmap and
| immediately understand that you've prioritized those Outcomes
| as being more impactful than the left side of your roadmap.
|
| (Extreme caveat here: You have to have a leadership team that
| buys into this approach. Some leaders will look at this and
| just say WTF where's your Gantt chart. You can then either
| teach them the right way, do what they say and probably fail,
| or quit, your call).
| [deleted]
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Great comment.
|
| "futures not features" is a gem!
| mason55 wrote:
| "Outcomes not outputs" is another similar way of stating
| it
| 121789 wrote:
| Your "right way" is the right approach to anchor on but in
| reality it never works out as nice as it sounds. Common
| problems:
|
| 1. You have some projects that are rigorously time bound
| (e.g. we absolutely need to ship X by Y date). Maybe scope
| is negotiable a bit but you definitely need results by a
| certain date.
|
| 2. Implicitly all of your work is time bound. Even if you
| say "we want to get to a 60% reduction in support calls",
| the follow up question is "by when?". Tons of internal
| forces (employee reviews, shifting company priorities)
| shift the framing from "we think a 60% reduction in support
| calls is a healthy sustainable level for our business, and
| that is our goal" to "we are targeting a 20% reduction in
| support calls over the next six months". Then your multi-
| quarter big-bet projects need to be broken down into phases
| which won't have an impact on the support calls by
| themselves, so you have to take ship goals or create other
| goals to capture that work (not great)
| dchuk wrote:
| Great comments:
|
| > 1. You have some projects that are rigorously time
| bound (e.g. we absolutely need to ship X by Y date).
| Maybe scope is negotiable a bit but you definitely need
| results by a certain date.
|
| In this case, you explicitly call out that roadmap item,
| and label it as "this thing will win out and other
| initiatives will be delayed if this thing goes sideways"
|
| > 2. Implicitly all of your work is time bound. Even if
| you say "we want to get to a 60% reduction in support
| calls", the follow up question is "by when?". Tons of
| internal forces (employee reviews, shifting company
| priorities) shift the framing from "we think a 60%
| reduction in support calls is a healthy sustainable level
| for our business, and that is our goal" to "we are
| targeting a 20% reduction in support calls over the next
| six months". Then your multi-quarter big-bet projects
| need to be broken down into phases which won't have an
| impact on the support calls by themselves, so you have to
| take ship goals or create other goals to capture that
| work (not great).
|
| Yes, you're right, I didn't write that one clearly. For
| outcomes like that, you should have defined "come up for
| air" dates where you measure and determine whether you
| keep going or call it as good enough/not worth it to
| continue and then move on to other things.
| tibbetts wrote:
| Finding a big problem is actually optional, and often a
| distraction. Most companies that are already functioning at
| scale have plenty of medium sized problems that need strategic
| fixes. For example "sales aren't growing in Japan." Most small
| companies are happy to stay small and also need only solve
| medium sized problems. For example "there is no good
| construction supplies vendor in this geography." It's only
| startups looking for rapid-scaling venture-friendly returns who
| need a big unsolved problem they can grow into.
|
| Of course, those companies get a whole lot of attention. But
| Google and Facebook and Twitter don't need big new unsolved
| problems. They already picked their big problem, and solved it
| well enough to get big. Now they need strategies which address
| the medium sized problems that limit their continued success.
| When they go looking for big new unsolved problems (I'm looking
| at you Alphabet and Meta) it's usually a distraction.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There is an old engineer quote that appears a couple times in my
| newest book, where at 3Com the Microsoft LAN Manager alliance and
| OS/2 were considered "strategic," as was the Bridge acquisition:
|
| _" Strategic" means "you don't make any money."_
|
| So yeah, we were all deeply cynical about that word, because it
| means, all too often, the inchoate wishes that MBAs throw onto a
| bunch of slides.
|
| I'm all in favor of a really well-thought "strategy," if you have
| one. If not, this will often suffice:
|
| _We 're going to do whatever we have to do to make a ton of
| money._
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Was Android strategic for google or just reaction to an
| existential threat?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I always like to distinguish "with hindsight" from "at the
| time." Anyone can figure out what's strategic from hindsight.
|
| At the time? I think probably Larry, Sergey, and Eric
| _thought_ it was strategic then. Did they think it was _more_
| strategic than radio ads (a business long gone!) or TV ads
| (also gone!)? Not sure.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It was strategic. They needed to control the endpoints to
| protect search. Hence Chrome, Android, Daydream, watches
| and so on. Half of what Google does is an effort to control
| endpoints to protect search.
| ra120271 wrote:
| I do a lot of vision and strategy work whether implicitly or
| explicitly. Why do we need to get somewhere and how do we get
| from here to there?
|
| I believe it's really hard to get where you you want to go if
| everyone is looking down at the next step or two and not to the
| horizon. That said, a strategy that does not deal with the
| journey and the challenges of the journey is just a vision
| without an ability to realise it.
|
| My experiences is that strategies that are not part of a delivery
| enablement capability are planned journeys without anyone to make
| it.
|
| I find it's one of the hardest things I do in my work life and it
| is one of the hardest things to do right with any level of
| consistency.
|
| Fortunately I do love a challenge.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| A lot of people giving hot takes here about what strategy is, and
| ironically Rumelt wrote his book to give a clear definition on
| what strategy is. The author of the substack does us all a
| disservice by not quoting Rumelt accurately.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "does us all a disservice but not quoting Rumelt accurately"
|
| but -> by
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Thanks, I've been making way too many typos lately! :)
| bjornsing wrote:
| I'm not convinced.
|
| Here's my theory for explaining the lack of strategy in many
| organizations: Many people are incapable of thinking into the
| future and imagining the possible outcomes of various courses of
| action. The let's-just-take-it-2-weeks-at-a-time-and-see-how-it-
| goes process known as "agile" has let these people assume
| positions of power. If you try and switch back to a more long-
| term strategic working model they will fight tooth and nail for
| their positions, which they understand they are not competent to
| hold if seeing more than 2 weeks into the future is part of the
| job description.
| orlp wrote:
| Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will
| produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's
| communication structure.
|
| -- Melvin E. Conway
|
| The exact same thing applies to any (effective realization of) a
| company strategy. Conway's law applies both during strategic
| planning and execution.
| tmountain wrote:
| The illustration of Conway's law at the top of that page always
| gives me a chuckle.
|
| http://scrumbook.org/product-organization-pattern-language/c...
| mouzogu wrote:
| How does NASA go about creating a strategy to land someone on the
| Moon or to build a space shuttle.
|
| this is something i'd really like to read about, and how they
| design for all the contingencies and things that can go wrong on
| a practical and hardware/software level.
| ralphb wrote:
| That's interesting. My kneejerk reaction to your comment was
| "no, you don't have a strategy for landing a man on the moon,
| you have a mission architecture!". But on further consideration
| there really seems to be a lot of overlap between system
| architectures and strategies (in the Rumelt sense). Diagnosis,
| kernel, guiding policies. Seems to fit both domains.
| evanwolf wrote:
| "A Strategy" is the problem. Strategy is an activity, a process,
| a rigorous engagement with reality, a forging of choices. It's
| not a "vision" or a "charter" or a document. It's an action. It's
| playing with other forces in the world that can be adversaries,
| obstacles, and allies. It's the thing you go back to when your
| assumptions are challenged and efforts don't work. Purpose
| informs strategy. Facts and intelligence inform strategy. Beware
| "strategy theater" and "Potempkin artifacts" like vision
| statements, roadmaps, and policies that comfort despite an
| absence of strategy work.
| phamilton wrote:
| More from Good Strategy, Bad Strategy:
|
| > the kernel of a good strategy contains three elements: a
| diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.
|
| A clear diagnosis is hard. It can take hours or even days of
| iterating on a single sentence and seeking feedback and
| continuing to iterate before you've accurate diagnosed the
| problem and found a way to clearly communicate it. Strategy is
| hard because taking days to write a single sentence just _feels_
| like a waste. But if that single sentence makes it so dozens of
| people better understand what you are doing it is 100% worth it.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > The problem isn't that people can't think strategically.
|
| The problem is that real life has a way of making your strategy
| obsolete.
|
| As Mike Tyson said: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in
| the mouth.
|
| Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in
| the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more
| important than strategy.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile
| (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is
| more important than strategy.
|
| Why is this necessary?
| LegitShady wrote:
| So you can dodge if someone tries to punch you in the mouth I
| guess
| hef19898 wrote:
| Only that Tyson and others do have a game plan that
| accountsvfor the fact of being punched in the mouth.
| mountainriver wrote:
| What's more important than that is to update your strategy
| openly when new information arises
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile
| (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is
| more important than strategy.
|
| Hard disagree:
|
| Those things are important, but I've seen teams with those
| qualities spin or fail to produce impact because they don't
| have a strategy.
|
| You need an objective and you need a plan to get there --
| "objectives and key results".
|
| Communication and agility allow for tactical changes in
| completing that strategy, which are important, but having no
| strategy will go nowhere.
| ddek wrote:
| I'd argue that having follow a doctrine of agility,
| communication and cooperation is in itself part of a
| strategy. It only solves part of the equation, though. Your
| overall strategy is incoherent if you pair these traits with
| a long-distance ivory tower goal setting. If you had a
| process to quickly identify and refine smaller (or sub)
| objectives you'd use the agility to its potential. Add in
| some mechanisms to minimise the artifacts of fast-paced agile
| engineering (e.g. tech debt, bloat), and you have a complete
| strategy.
| oersted wrote:
| It's not an excuse not to have a plan. Strategy is dynamic and
| iterative.
|
| When you get punched in the mouth, you just adjust your plan
| based on new evidence, you don't throw it out the window.
|
| Besides, business and engineering are not like fights and
| battles. Sudden shocks are rare and split-second decisions are
| not often called for. In most cases new evidence comes
| gradually, there is time to validate it, digest it and re-tune
| expectations and strategy.
|
| Furthermore, always acting on the main immediate
| priority/bottleneck rarely leads to optimal speed. In computer
| science, this is called a greedy algorithm. They are indeed
| simpler to implement and tune (and to execute by teams), but
| rarely optimal. Real speed requires making predictions and
| adjusting them as more information becomes available, this is
| what planning is.
| dgb23 wrote:
| > When you get punched in the mouth, you just adjust your
| plan based on new evidence, you don't throw it out the
| window.
|
| I interpret the Mike Tyson quote differently than you. What
| he was saying that under high pressure you _will_ throw stuff
| out of the window, namely all the stuff that doesn't work
| under pressure, in difficult situations. This is why plans
| need to be simple. You need to be able to keep them in your
| head when shit hits the fan so you don't start flailing
| around like a headless chicken.
| nisa wrote:
| > Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile
| (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is
| more important than strategy.
|
| Been part of a team that was very agile and executed quite
| effectively every day. We just put out fires caused by our bad
| code. It worked fine in some way every time but hours were
| wasted but everyone worked hard and gave their best.
|
| I guess a strategy in this context would be post-mortems and
| root-cause analysis and time for the devs to actually learn the
| frameworks they are abusing.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Or alternatively:
|
| "No Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy"
|
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/
| hef19898 wrote:
| Which doesn't mean you can afford to have no plan at all.
| Because: "Failing to plan means planning to fail".
| mrhether wrote:
| Such words ring true to everybody who has ever had a chance
| to experience failure. Proper time management is the key I
| would say and that's what it's good for and where it fails.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I also like that one: Proper prior planning prevents piss
| poor performance, the 7P.
| pfdietz wrote:
| "Plans are useless, but planning is essential."
|
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/
| vendiddy wrote:
| Are there some historical examples of good strategies out there?
|
| I'm having trouble understanding the definition of a strategy and
| how it differs from a plan.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| A strategy is more of a framework of how decisions will be made
| and what the long term goals are.
|
| A plan is usually specifics steps you will do to achieve those
| goals.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| My take on strategic thinking is that it's a small set of very
| high level and related goals and constraints that, if achieved,
| are likely to lead to the success of a project. A good strategy
| IMO is relatively simple (a short set of bullet points), widely
| known, and actively used to guide decision making at all
| levels. Most importantly, a good strategy helps you to say
| "no", because most of us have very limited resources at our
| disposal and we simply can't do everything.
|
| Here's a simple example. Let's say we have some SaaS product;
| we naturally want to maximise its revenue. There are many
| potential strategies. Strategy "A" might be to sell a small
| number of subs at a high monthly price. Strategy "B" might be
| to sell many subs at a low monthly price. Strategy "C" might be
| to fund the product through advertising. There are other
| strategies, too. You will pick the strategy you believe has the
| greatest chance of achieving your goals in your specific
| circumstances. (Typically the strategy would also involve
| conscious decisions about how the product works and where it
| fits in the market)
|
| Choosing a specific strategy helps you allocate scarce
| resources and build the right product. Adopting a strategy "A"
| above could maybe let you manage without a complex self-
| onboarding flow, but it might also require a (potentially
| expensive) direct sales team. Strategy "B" and "C" might
| require self-onboarding, which can be tricky, but requires a
| less expensive marketing team. Strategy "C" doesn't require a
| payment gateway or billing platform, but probably needs to be
| able to operate at greater scale.
|
| > Are there some historical examples of good strategies out
| there?
|
| Most strategies play out in stages over time. IIRC, Tesla had a
| pretty simple strategy of selling super expensive Roadsters to
| learn about building cars and to fund the manufacture of
| expensive models S and X, which in turn funded the less
| expensive models 3 and Y. The beauty of their strategy was that
| they knew why they were building a Roadster, and they weren't
| distracted by wondering if they should add certain features
| like (I'm making this up) child restraints. The risk of this
| strategy was that there might not be enough rich people to buy
| enough roadsters to get to second base. (History suggests they
| made the right call)
|
| The thing is, if you don't have a strategy then you end up
| wasting resources building every little brain fart someone
| comes up with in the hope that your numbers will improve. But
| the weight of all these conflicting ideas, and the time wasted
| on things that don't work out, is every bit as risky as
| choosing a single coherent strategy. A strategy is like a great
| feature filter where you can throw out half the ideas because
| "it doesn't fit with our strategy", which makes you heaps more
| efficient.
|
| As long as you don't change strategies too often.
|
| > I'm having trouble understanding the definition of a strategy
| and how it differs from a plan.
|
| In truth, a strategy is just a kind of plan, but one without
| much detail. It's the high level stuff that kind of lays out
| the game plan. First, you need to decide that you need to build
| a Roadster - that's the strategy. Then, you need to build it.
| That requires planning. The strategy is important because it
| tells you why you're building it. The planning is important
| because it makes the strategy happen.
| dgb23 wrote:
| There's huge overlap, but if you want to differentiate them,
| then you can do it like so:
|
| A strategy is high level stuff. Typically vague and open to
| interpretation. It's about general approach and big decisions,
| core principles and goals.
|
| Tactics/operations is the details given a particular situation
| or project. They can be grounded in specific steps to take.
|
| A plan can be understood as formulating tactics and bridging
| the gap between strategy and tactics. You may have multiple
| plans that you pull out given some events and circumstances. I
| think there's overlap with the term 'protocol' as well.
|
| As for good historical examples you may look at military
| strategy. The most consistent and successful ones are often the
| most boring: robust logistics and well-provisioned forces,
| cultural assimilation, high discipline/training, mass produced
| equipment, specialized roles, competent officers etc. Those are
| broad strokes and not necessarily specific implementations
| (even though they matter too). Look at the Romans or Ottomans
| for good examples.
| tmountain wrote:
| I think Apple launching the iPod is a good example.
|
| - They saw a need in the consumer market that wasn't filled.
|
| - They used the Apple team as "target customers" to help with
| needs analysis.
|
| - They addressed UX/ergonomics issues present in existing
| offerings.
|
| - They leveraged existing footholds to maximize value (iTunes,
| digital store, etc).
|
| - They started with a niche market to gain influencer status
| with their offering.
|
| - They ended with an ecosystem of products built around their
| original idea, some of which represented new innovations that
| weren't part of the original plan.
|
| All of the bullets above can be folded into a plan, but at the
| macro level, they comprise a directional motion for the org.
|
| "We're going to offer this thing to solve this problem to these
| people, our unique competitive advantages are X, Y, and Z, and
| we believe we're uniquely positioned as a result."
| ghaff wrote:
| >- They leveraged existing footholds to maximize value
| (iTunes, digital store, etc)
|
| And with the exception of this, there was arguably very
| little about the original iPod strategy--at least as seen
| from the outside--that was at all remarkable and
| differentiating. It was mostly about execution including
| marketing.
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