Thinking Lab · 3 lessons
Strategic Thinking
Think beyond the immediate next step Strategy is mostly the decision about what you will not do. A plan with no sacrifice in it is a list of hopes.
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Think beyond the immediate next step
In one line: Choose what you will not do, under conditions you do not control.
When you need it
- Your plan assumes one future and you have no second version.
- Everything on the list is important and nothing is being dropped.
- A goal has been restated three times and no action has changed.
The common misreading
- What people think
- Strategy is an ambitious goal, stated well.
- What is true instead
- A goal is where you want to be. Strategy is what you will spend, in what order, and what you are giving up to do it.
After this module you can name a real trade-off — the thing you are giving up — instead of a list of priorities.
The key idea
Strategy is mostly the decision about what you will not do. A plan with no sacrifice in it is a list of hopes.
Start with a hard question
Something that made sense once and is now carried by habit. Write why it continues.
What are you doing that you would stop, if you were being honest about your direction?
Answer it before reading the lessons — then again after, and notice what changed.
The lessons
- Goals, actions and resources — If your plan requires resources you do not have, it is not a plan you have made yet. (6 min)
- Scenario thinking and time horizons — Look for the move that is reasonable across several futures, rather than the one optimised for the future you expect. (7 min)
- Prioritisation and strategic trade-offs — A priority that does not remove anything is not a priority. The removal is the decision. (6 min)
Practise it
Short exercises. Under each is what a considered answer tends to contain — not a mark scheme.
Only one survives
List everything you are trying to make progress on. Keep exactly one for the next month. Write what you lose by dropping the rest.
- Tends to contain: A real cut, not a reordering
- Tends to contain: Named losses rather than "nothing much"
- Tends to contain: Whether the kept one is the one that unlocks the others
Three futures, one move
Sketch three versions of your field in two years: much as now, changed considerably, changed in a way you did not expect. What is sensible in all three?
- Tends to contain: Three genuinely different futures
- Tends to contain: A move that survives all of them
- Tends to contain: What would tell you early which one is arriving
The second-order cost
You decide to become the person who always says yes at work. What does that buy in six months, and what does it cost in two years?
- Tends to contain: Short-term reputation and opportunity
- Tends to contain: Longer-term capacity and the kind of work that arrives
- Tends to contain: Whether the trade is one you would choose knowingly
Reflect
What did you decide not to do, and has that held?
Mental models for this
- Compounding — Small repeated effects multiply rather than add, so time matters more than size.
- Parkinson’s law — Work expands to fill the time available for it.
Methods for this
- Diagnosis, policy, action — The three parts a real strategy has, and whose absence makes one a list of hopes.
- Position before conflict — Improving your position so the contest is easier, rather than fighting harder.
- Three futures, one move — Stress-testing a plan against several futures instead of predicting one.