
Strategy: How to Develop, Structure and Shape a Winning System - bolmn
https://chrisbolman.com/strategy-develop-effective-framework/
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BlackJack
This is a nice and ambitious post. A few thoughts:

1\. There are great insights in Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma.
The focus of that book is on Disruptive Innovation, where a new upstart with
some new tech/angle crushes your business. A lot of your notes/principles here
are captured in that book concisely.

2\. One thing that is useful for employees to understand is how their company
creates and executes on a strategy. It's crazy to me how many guides there are
on strategy when most individuals do 0 strategy setting. The result is that
you think of a great strategy, get shot down for whatever reason, and just
grumble about how the "execs don't get it". It's much more fruitful to
understand how the big dawgs are setting their strategy and what models
they're using, and then you can figure out how to operate and innovate in that
context.

3\. Your comments on insight and research reminded me of Charlie Munger's
talks on Mental Models. The basic idea is that you learn from a bunch of
disciplines and your brain starts to tie things together and you'll produce
insights. Shane over at Farnam Street
([https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-
models/](https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-models/)) has a great guide
and intro.

Overall, I enjoyed reading your post and am impressed by the level of
research. Great job.

~~~
bolmn
1\. Good call-out. Agree and would strongly encourage anyone in this space to
read Innovator's Dilemma.

2\. Could not agree more with this (and have seen a lot of first-hand pain
here). One of the biggest generators of employee anxiety is simple
uncertainty, and uncertainty is a product of inadequate visibility into and/or
understanding of how and why things are happening. That's again one of the
reasons why I feel every org/team needs a framework like V2MOM, because that's
a hierarchical structure for documenting and communicating a strategy in a way
that gets employees participating in its development, execution, measurement
and refinement.

3\. +1 here too. I link out to the Farnam street post in mine.

~~~
p33p
Link to resources about V2MOM and other frameworks?

~~~
bolmn
In there too, but tl;dr:

[https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/04/how-to-create-
alignm...](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/04/how-to-create-alignment-
within-your-company.html)

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paulpauper
okay I have a system and structure..why am I not as successful as Henry Ford
or Russell Simmons or Bruce D. Henderson. Luck plays a huge role, imho. The
survivorship bias is huge. It's easy to review the winners and then work
backwards to derive a 'theory', after the fact, as for why they were
successful...it's like an interpolation polynomial.

~~~
bolmn
Paul, thanks for the comment and I agree with you: luck and timing are two
external factors that have significant influence on the outcome, and
strategists have little if any control over either. The only "counsel" I can
provide is the idea of being as iterative as possible, and try to adapt /
respond to the result (test => observe => refine). If you had $10 to bet on
the same probability outcomes, rather than betting all $10 on one outcome, if
you could play it by putting $1 on 5 outcomes and reserving the remaining $5
to double down on your highest probability winner, you're much better-
positioned, statistically, to come out ahead.

~~~
alexpetralia
And in a similar vein, you could use the Kelly criterion for how to optimally
allocate your time/effort/capital.

~~~
cpeterso
For those who, like me, didn't know what the Kelly criterion was: _In
probability theory and intertemporal portfolio choice, the Kelly criterion is
a formula used to determine the optimal size of a series of bets._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion)

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hvass
Highly recommend checking out the podcast Exponent and the blog Stratechery,
both by Ben Thompson. He is a great analyst and both Exponent and Stratechery
focus on the intersection of tech and business strategy.

~~~
stuartaxelowen
I listened for a couple episodes, but when they started talking about machine
learning it became obvious how little they understood it. With how willing
they were to confidently opine on how it would change industries based on an
incorrect understanding, I lost confidence in the other things they talked
about.

~~~
petra
True. They did the same in other technical subjects(UberPool and travelling
salesman), so this is probably a repeating theme for them. And in the same
episode, they didn't even do a survey of similar startups solving the same
problem(which carries big implications on market structure), so it's not just
a matter of technical subjects.

~~~
sutterbomb
What startups would be worthy of inclusion in that discussion? I'm not
familiar with any that'd have any implications on market structure.

~~~
petra
via((@ridewithvia) manage to do true ride sharing very well. they fill 8
seater vans. they don't use freelancers, but employees, and they license their
software(and practically their model) to cities and other organizations.

Market structure: i can see workplaces(or maybe big events) licensing via,
keeping control of the user, and offering free ride services from home/work to
the cheapest transportation bidder, for example. Thus workplaces will keep all
the "network effect" and market power.

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sah2ed
Interesting article.

The money quote is the part about insight:

 _The best strategies are built on top of great insights. Generally, I 'd
consider a strategic insight to be an understanding of “the true nature of
something” (a customer need, market dynamic, or future trend) and/or its
relationship to other important environmental factors. There's also a
forecasting component to insights. Strategic insights commonly identify
opportunity gaps in time — such as the difference between the current state of
something and its anticipated future state._

~~~
bolmn
thanks sah2ed

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peter_vukovic
A really great overview of the topic.

One thought on the building blocks summary - I would add an Ideation phase
after the Insights phase or somehow mention the importance of ideas. The
current outline suggests strategy creation is a highly analytical process,
when, in fact, it is both creative and analytical at the same time, and
requires both sets of skills.

As a side note, you might want to check out the work of Victor Cheng who
introduces a lot of McKinsey strategic tools in his book and video series.
Could be helpful for your future work!

~~~
bolmn
thanks Peter, appreciate the feedback. I kept ideation as part of the
"Insights" phase but you're correct, it could be split into (1) research and
(2) ideation. I'll check out Victor's work. best, Chris

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hidenotslide
Sort of conflates marketing strategy and corporate strategy, though there is
overlap. The flow charts are vague enough to apply to any type of problem.

Marketing strategy covers anything related to sales/revenue, such as
customers, products, channels or communications.

Corporate strategy covers long term business policies of a firm, and is best
understood through an economics lens. Things like make vs. buy decisions,
competitive advantage, market and industry analysis.

~~~
bolmn
The belief that corporate strategy somehow exists separately or independently
from marketing/sales/go-to-market strategy is not a good baseline assumption
to operate from.

~~~
hidenotslide
Sorry for the late reply. You are right that they are closely related, as
revenue is a pretty important part of running a business.

But I find it useful to distinguish between them, as do most business schools.
Mergers are part of corporate strategy that only somewhat involve marketing
considerations. Advertising is marketing strategy that doesn't have much to do
with corporate strategy. A decision to enter new markets would be in the
overlap area.

Anyway I thought the original article was just vague consultant speak.

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partycoder
A lot of it is being at the right place at the right time.

Let's take a successful product: Pacman. Launch it in 2017 instead of 1980,
the result would not be as good.

~~~
dozzie
You mean, an arcade? Like Flappy Bird?

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icebraining
Flappy Bird was successful, but it wasn't Pacman-level successful.

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luvz2code
Wonderful read. Thanks.

Few thoughts, In my opinion, leaders communicate the mission, vision and
values, but never clearly communicate the strategy. The strategy for each
department and team and it’s sub-teams with-in an org will be different. This
has to be communicated at all levels to have the entire workforce work towards
the single mission.

Many Startups are successful due to this.

~~~
bolmn
thanks. could agree more. communicating strategy is incredibly important and a
gap that seems to happen often in companies. there's a big difference at the
employee level between (a) a strategy that exists [somewhere at the
executive/management level] and (b) a strategy that exists and is transparent,
well-communicated and well-understood.

This is why I think a hierarchical, cascading V2MOM or OKR approach is a
helpful communication vehicle to transfer strategy top-down and build
consensus and participation in the strategy process bottom-up.

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Lordarminius
Nice article.

I just want to add that with regard to definitions of the term strategy, , one
could do worse than follow Jack Welch:

 _" The evolution of a central plan through a continually changing set of
circumstances"_

~~~
bolmn
thanks, glad you enjoyed. spot on quote: Jack certainly knew what he was
talking about.

