Evergreen is a collection of links to the best learning resources in business, collected by a group of managers, founders, and investors. We contribute resources about one topic each week, which are synthesized and shared in this Weekly Edition. The aim is to learn more efficiently through increased context and focus. Join here to receive the next Edition of Evergreen Business Weekly. Remember, these are designed to feel like short books, you’re meant to meander and spend ~3 hours on this topic this week. Save some of these links and read them throughout the week. Immerse yourself in this topic and leave the week smarter than you started it! Oh man, I’m so excited for this Edition. I distinctly remember the first moment I got a loose grasp on Business Strategy, and it was instantly illuminating. Getting the basics of strategy ingrained will have you seeing the world differently. We’ll start by taking a look at the core of Strategy, the basics that are applicable for any business, with frameworks that you can use immediately. To dive deeper, we’ll see some different ways to think about Strategy that will give you completely new perspectives on your company. Among all of the possible definitions of Business Strategy, this set of points(from Ray Stern) seem the most precise and descriptive. Read it slow: Ray was kind enough to share a deck that he made for internal training during his tenure at Intuit. It’s a fantastic resource and you’ll see more from it shortly. If you only read one thing in this post — it should be this section, about the book by Richard Rumelt: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. This was the first book that really made strategy accessible to me. Rumelt describes Bad Strategy, which probably sounds familiar to you: Bad strategy is not simply the absence of good strategy. It grows out of specific misconceptions and leadership dysfunctions. Once you develop the ability to detect bad strategy, you will dramatically improve your effectiveness at judging, influencing, and creating strategy. To detect a bad strategy, look for one or more of it’s four major hallmarks: Fluff: Fluff is a form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses “Sunday” words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high-level thinking. Failure to face the challenge: Bad strategy fails to recognize or define the challenge. When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy or improve it. Mistaking goals for strategy: Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles. Bad strategic objectives: A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are “bad” when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable. […] Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy. One common reason for choosing avoidance is the pain or difficulty of choice. When leaders are unwilling or unable to make choices among competing values and parties, bad strategy is the consequence. If this describes your company, you better go look for a new job, or roll up your sleeves and get to work. Now here are the details for good strategy:
If you understand the definition of strategy and these two explanations well enough, you know enough strategy to make an impact today. This book is the perfect place to start learning about strategy. The approach of codifying and explaining bad strategy alone makes this a crucial read. Avoid the traps of bad strategy, and you’re likely to do fine. If you’re more of a video/audio person, this lecture by author Richard Rumelt at the London School of Economics is fantastic. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy and this video were also suggested by Graham Moody of Ansarada, who has had Richard Rumelt speak to their company. Meg Whitman’s Favorite Book (CEO of Ebay & HP)When Zaarly, the startup I’ve been working on for the past few years, was transitioning into a new business model, we got some advice from our board member Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay and current CEO of Hewlett Packard. She recommended we go buy copies of Playing to Win for our team, and use that framework to refine our strategy. Co-Authored by the Dean of Rotman school of Management and AG Lafley, former Chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble, it blends two approaches to strategic thinking: stories from the trenches and theories from Academia. The core of the book introduces the framework that P&G has used countless times to create successful brands, products, and new product categories.
Here it is in graphic form with some additional notes: Each of these decisions must respect the others — they are not made independently. Together they form a playbook and create the focus that will unite a team‘s efforts. This is a great book for a company currently navigating some strategic challenges. Sitting down to answer these questions with some of the book’s examples fresh in mind can create breakthrough ideas. The Opposite of your Strategy must be a StrategyOne simple and powerful test of your strategy is that the opposite must also be a reasonable strategy. Otherwise, you haven’t made any actual decisions at all, you’ve just stated the obvious. This is what Erik Martin, former GM of Reddit, had to say:
This short post from Roger Martin on Harvard Business Review goes into a little more detail on this test, and has some stunning examples:
If you’re thinking “Yea, Duh.” I’m right there with you, but it happens every day. Just don’t let it be you. Strategy is what creates Competitive AdvantageIf there is a prerequisite for understanding Strategy, it’s understanding Competitive Advantage. Strategy is how we create a Competitive Advantage, how to make the decisions we make that get us closer to the destination. To understand Competitive Advantage, check out the Edition of Evergreen on it, How to Create a Winning Business, which includes wisdom from Peter Thiel, Warren Buffett, and Sam Walton. Also, the classic from Michael Porter, The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy. Peter Thiel’s lecture at Stanford, Competition is for Losers, was suggested by Victor Sowers, and has some great thoughts on how competitive advantage creates monopolies. More Perspectives on StrategyThere are a lot of emerging opinions on Strategy, and new ways to think about it. There are examples and metaphors from nearly every discipline, all fascinating in their own way. Center vs. Periphery StrategyOne interesting pattern that came up was the flow of new ideas from the periphery to the center. This post from the archive of BCG has an excerpt that captures this concept well:
This model shows us the rise and fall of companies in many industries, and it’s a narrative that dominates strategy, especially in innovative sectors. It also explains why companies in the center are so determined to tame or defend themselves from the periphery. This guy knows how to operate from the Center.Jeff Bezos has an amazing quote about this strategy in this fantastic interview with Henry Blodget. Thanks to Mike Smith for the contribution!
This also bears an interesting relationship to the classic concept from Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma. Defending the center is not impossible, but it’s extremely hard over time. This short video explains the concept, and how the theory can be translated to all businesses. Thanks to Ray Stern for suggesting this video, and directing me to the BCG archive, which was full of good stuff. Emergent StrategyThis incredible post on Harvard Business Review, called Crafting Strategy makes the important distinction between strategic planning and execution, and proposes that the two should be iterative and intertwined.
Crafting Strategy is a beautifully-written series of thoughts on including execution, testing, and iteration into your strategic thinking. This post is a great balance to the frameworks we’ve been looking at so far.
A huge thank-you to Kenny Fraser for suggesting Crafting Strategy. Strategy is Context-dependent & Ever-changingAll decisions are dependent on their environment. Obvious as it may seem, it’s always worth remembering that both ‘turn right’ and ‘turn left’ are either correct or deadly depending on the situation. Strategic decisions share this trait, as John Hagel explores in his blog, Edge Perspectives. He makes a distinction between ‘Terrain Strategy’ in which you can see where you’re going and navigate toward it, and ‘Trajectory Strategy’ when things move far too quickly to navigate in real-time and the only way to win is to anticipate correctly.
This set of two blog posts, The Big Shift in Strategy, Part 1 and Part 2 are quick reads with great insight. Thanks to Matt Frost of Medallia for suggesting these posts and this new perspective. What we can learn from the History of StrategyIn Strategy, timeless principles unfold in an ever-evolving modern arena. History is full of lessons that apply to the challenges of today. There’s a massive amount to learn from the successes and failures of the strategic decisions in our past, as seen in this massive book on the history of Strategy, suggested by Erik Martin. I’m only a few pages in (out of 600+), and it’s already extremely interesting. Freedman talks about how base strategy is to our nature, and how primates demonstrate strategic thinking for mating and social maneuvers. To learn the lessons of the history of strategy, there’s nothing more comprehensive than Strategy, a History. Reading Lists for Future Strategy MastersThere’s always another vital lesson out there. The next page might hold the secret to building your business or preventing your next disaster. To keep learning more about strategy, here are two great reading lists that will be instructive in complementary ways. Harvard Business Review’s 10 Must-reads on Strategy. The best 10 case studies, papers and posts over the past few decades from the most prestigious business school on earth. There’s gold in these pages. Thanks to Bo Fishback for finding and suggesting this set of papers! Ryan Holiday’s reading list on Strategy, 24 Books to Hone Your Strategic Mind. An interesting mix of philosophy, military history, and political lessons, this looks like a fascinating blend of perspectives with the promise of insights that will change the set of possibilities you perceive. Thanks to Aaron Wolfson for contributing this list, and Ryan Holiday for putting it together. If you enjoyed this, you’ll get more like it by joining Evergreen: Upcoming Book: The Almanack of Naval RavikantMini-book: Career Advice for Uniquely Ambitious People Personal Site: EJorgenson.com Evergreen Lives on DonationsEvergreen requires time and money. If you find this project helpful, please consider buying me a coffee, or sending some Bitcoin. BTC Wallet: 3KiLX3bjnpmb3a4YiBhm3vSNiV2Erxk1fX (If you’ve never used Crypto before, Coinbase is the easiest way to start.) Thank you very much! ❤ ☺ Thank YouMassive appreciation for who suggested pieces of content (or wrote something new) for this Edition of Evergreen: Ray Stern, Aaron Wolfson, Bo Fishback, Matt Frost, Erik Martin, Victor Sowers, Graham Moody, Kenny Fraser, Derek Baynton, Itamar Goldminz, Julian Miller, and a special thank-you to Mike Smith, who bought and donated the domain Evergreenlibrary.com to the cause. Thank you Mike! Many thanks for being a part of this project! Not every suggestion is able to make it to the final edit, but every single suggestion is read and appreciated. Never EnoughAs my Father always says: “There’s always room for the best.” There’s always a better resource out there. These collections can always get better, and I hope that they do. If you can think of anything that was missed, I welcome you to share it. To share your thoughts, improvements or additions: Email or Twitter. |