This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans (Create a Strategy to Elevate Your Career, Community & Life)

by Seth Godin

Strategy is often an unseen option, apparently too sophisticated, expensive, or elitist for most of us. But once we see it, our next steps become clear. We have what we need to make better plans.

A strategy isn’t a map—it’s a compass. Strategy is a better plan. It’s the hard work of choosing what to do today to make tomorrow better. This is the point. This is at the heart of our work and the challenge of our days. Toward better.

Time, games, empathy and systems. They’re everywhere we look, and easy to ignore. Each supports and is supported by the other three. Throughout this project, we’ll be shifting from one to the other, building up to a fuller, actionable understanding of how strategy works. Time, because strategy plays out over time in the way a garden grows. Games, because there are multiple players and different possible outcomes. Trees compete for light and only one grows to be the tallest, but all of them are part of the forest. Empathy, because people don’t see what you see or even want what you want. Plant your seeds in places where the conditions are right. And Systems, because whenever we work together, a system is created. And that system often lasts far longer than we expect. The swamp isn’t the same as the plains, but each is a complex web of interactions. Each builds on the next in a never-ending braid.

What Do People Want? Once our basic needs for food, shelter and health are met, most people dance with three conflicting desires: • Affiliation • Status • Freedom from fear

Affiliation is community. Fitting in. Being liked. Affiliation is wearing the right fashion, using the correct salad fork and knowing the words to the song around the campfire. Status is always relative. Who eats lunch first? Who’s up and who’s down? And freedom from fear is an internal construct. Fear can be used as fuel, but it’s more likely to be avoided. Marketing works on these three principles. And systems all use them to maintain their structure. If you want to understand why someone makes a choice, look for what people actually want, not only the proxies and substitutes they say they want.

The Non-Strategy of “Take What You Can Get” “You can pick anyone. I’m anyone.” Hustle for attention. Do a very good job. Play it safe and follow the leader. This is a non-strategy. The non-strategy of doing what we were told, of fitting in and settling. This is the non-strategy that comes from not thinking about strategy. The number on the car’s speedometer isn’t always an indication of how fast you’re getting to where you’re going. You might, after all, be driving in circles, really quickly. We can do better. I can’t tell you what your strategy should be, but I know that you need one.

Don’t surrender your agency and revert to the numbing day-to-day grind of compliance. You can make things better.

Elegance is simplicity, efficiency, and effectiveness. It’s not only a solution that gets a result. It’s arguably a better solution—the least complex and clearest way forward. An elegant strategy offers leverage in service of the change we seek. While it might seem effortless in execution, creating the method requires insight and care.

Systems respond to strategies, and elegant strategies give us leverage. Three things to focus on: • The strategy gets better as you grow. Anyone can sprint, but elegant strategies are something that you can maintain. • Systemic advantage defeats heroic effort. Heroic effort is thrilling, but long-term elegant strategies rarely require miracles on a daily basis. • They’re simple to explain and difficult to stick to. Over time, the pressures to vary from the elegant strategy increases—a thousand little compromises that eventually lead to mediocrity.

Stewart Brand points out that if you look at a map of Boston from 1924 and compare it to one from 2024, almost every building has changed over the last century. And yet few of the major roadways have. It’s far easier to renovate or replace a building than it is to reroute a road. Systems have nodes (buildings) and connections (roads). Those roads have conventions that we all need to understand to stay safe. Buildings (and people) get replaced all the time. Roadways (and the rules of systems) fight like crazy to stay the way they are.

DNA tests, passports, digital surveillance, rankings, membership lists, and SAT scores are all transformative because they surface data and turn it into information. Information changes systems.

Strategy is the hard work of choosing what to do today to improve our tomorrow.

A series of 17 questions shines a light on the work to be done. It brings tomorrow forward to today, right here and right now, allowing us to articulate a strategy. • Who are we here to serve? • What is the change we seek to make? • What are our resources? • What is the genre we’re working in? • Who has done something like this before me? • What systems are in play? • Am I changing someone’s status? • Why would anyone voluntarily choose to be part of this work? • What will they tell their colleagues? • Who gains in status, affiliation and power by supporting this work? • Will early support translate into more support later? • Where is the network effect? • What do I need to learn to make this work? • Who do I need to work with? • Where is the dip and when should I quit? • What will I do if it doesn’t work out? • How much is enough?

As Michael Porter has pointed out, a strategy isn’t a goal. And a strategy isn’t a list of tasks. A strategy is the set of choices we make (and stick with) as we seek to compete.

Strategy is a philosophy, based on awareness of our goals and our perception of the systems around us. Tactics are the hard work we do to support our strategy. But great tactics don’t help if the strategy is working against us.

Chores and tasks are work we hire ourselves to do. This might be most or all of your day. Clearing your inbox, answering the phone, doing your job. Chores and tasks are all there is for workers in a factory. Sometimes they are satisfying, letting us off the hook, but they don’t take us very far. Leverage is the work we outsource. Outsourcing is far easier than it used to be, but challenges us to use our resources wisely. When we do the work that only we can do, we generate enough value to hire others to do the chores and tasks that they’re willing to do. And emotional labor is the work of change, decision-making, and strategy. It is the difficult work of embracing incompetence as we learn new skills, and the challenging work of seeing and then implementing real change. This is easy to avoid, which is one reason we spend so much time on chores and tasks.

Strategy is a compass that helps us to take action when we’re uncertain, to build networks when we’re alone, and to persevere until the world we live in becomes the world we imagine.

Successful people figure out how to trade their time and their effort for the change they seek to make in the world.

If I want the real truth about a business and where it’s going, I’d divide the modern business plan into six sections: 1. Truth 2. Assertions 3. Alternatives 4. People 5. Money 6. Time

The truth section describes the world as it is. Footnote it if you want to, but tell us about the market you are entering, the needs that already exist, the competitors in your space, technology standards, the way others have succeeded and failed in the past. The more specific the better. The more ground knowledge the better. The more visceral the stories the better.

The assertions section is your chance to describe how you’re going to change things. We will do X, and then Y will happen. We will build Z with this much money in this much time. We will present Q to the market and the market will respond by taking this action.

Of course, this section will be incorrect. You will make assertions that won’t pan out. You’ll miss budgets and deadlines and sales. So the alternatives section tells me what you’ll do if that happens. How much flexibility does your product or team have? If your assertions don’t pan out, is it over?

The next section is all about money. Because projects = money + time. How much do you need, how will you spend it, what does cash flow look like, P&Ls, balance sheets, margins and exit strategies. What assets will you build?

Finally, for emphasis, time. What will be different a week or a month or a year after you launch? How will the unseen axis of time inform your planning, so you are leading and not following.

The sperm whale wasn’t saved by a publicity campaign or people voluntarily cutting back on light. It was saved by the development of kerosene lanterns and then the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania. The system didn’t want to kill all the whales. All the system wanted was to make a profit by solving the problem of darkness. When it found a cheaper and more efficient way to do that, it did.

Framework for a Strategy • Awareness of the system and the rules. Any change we seek to make involves scarcity, the status quo, networks, and what came before. Most of all, it involves awareness of time and the distance from today until tomorrow. • Empathy for the individuals who must engage with your project. We don’t need to have sympathy or agreement to realize that other people have the independence and power to make choices, and those choices will always be based on their experience, worldview, and self-interest. • Choices are available to each of us. We have more agency than we’d like to admit, and our decisions can be better aligned with the goals of the project. • Uncertainty is a feature of every strategy. Not the delineated steps of a proven process, but the exploration and probabilities of creating a better version of the future. • Resilience comes from acknowledging that the x-axis is time, and that today is not the same as tomorrow. Few projects work as we intend, and our strategy embraces the truth that our plans will change. • Resources involve a clear understanding of what’s available to execute the strategy. This includes financial resources, human capital, technology, and other assets that can be leveraged to achieve the desired outcomes.

Culture defeats tactics every time, which is why strategy is often about creating culture.

Marketing is the art of building a product or service that tells a story. A true story—one that resonates and changes the person who experiences it. The first job of the marketer is to find a problem and to solve it, helping the customer get to where they are going. And the second, which (from a marketing perspective) is ultimately more important than the first, is to give that person a story to tell others. To engage with the web of community. To help that person improve their status and affiliation because they are engaging with others using the story that you helped them create. When we see the world as a web, and our work as helping the people in the web connect and grow, the strategy becomes far more clear.

The successful blueprint aligns the change you seek to make with the life you seek to live.

I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life’s blueprint. Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you are nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance… Secondly, in your life’s blueprint you must have as a basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You’re going to be deciding as the days and the years unfold what you will do in life—what your life’s work will be. And once you discover what it will be, set out to do it well. And I say to you, my young friends, doors are opening to each of you—doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and your fathers—and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to enter these doors as they open.” The Rev. M.L. King Jr.,

Strategy always involves a delay. We need to do something non-obvious or un-fun now so we can get the result we seek later. And that requires trust. Trust in our understanding of what’s being offered, and trust that the world won’t let us down.

Strategic work is a blueprint for where we’re headed. It’s far more than a goal. It’s a deliberate statement about the world as we see it, the systems as we understand them, and the probabilities of our assertions working out. Our blueprint describes how effort now will turn into impact later, and it is built around empathy and traction.

We talk about tension as if it’s a bad thing. But the only way to launch a rubber band across the room is to pull it backwards, creating tension. Tension permits the water spider to walk across a puddle without drowning. And tension keeps us focused on the world around us. When we arrive with the change we seek to make, we are causing tension. There’s always tension associated with change—the people we serve wonder, “Will it work, can I ignore it, what are other people doing, will this make me look stupid, am I qualified, will I be left out, what is everyone else doing, what will it cost me, can I leave the other choices behind?” The strategy we adopt has tension at its center. We’re not here to “do our job.” We’re here to make a change happen. A good idea isn’t based on what you would do if you could start over. A good idea is a series of leverage points and disruptions that would permit a change agent to create tension and opportunity that might bend a system in the right direction.

If you listen to the original recordings of rock stars like Sly Stone, Janis Joplin and Lou Reed, you’ll hear that they started out doing their best to sound exactly like everyone else. That’s what the system seems to reward. That’s what gets you a producer and a demo and apparently, a shot at stardom. Except it almost never works. The big step between musician and rock star is the decision to sound like yourself instead of seeking to sound like everyone else.

What Does It Mean to Be a Strategic Thinker? It means that you see the system. It means that you develop the assets and skills that you will need to work with the system or to change it. It means that you have the empathy to understand how others make choices. And it means that you work to reduce delays in the feedback loops so you can adjust your tactics based on the system’s response to your work.

Every choice comes with a cost. When we spend an hour reading a book, it’s an hour we didn’t spend listening to speed metal. When we take on one client, we’ve chosen not to pursue a different option. Opportunity cost is real, and as we’ve been given more access, more tools, and more opportunities, the cost continues to increase. Strategies recognize that our time comes at a cost, and challenge us to choose. You’re spending your time whether you realize it or not. And without a strategy, the time you spent is wasted. When we recognize that time today is the investment we make to transform our lives tomorrow, the invisible axis becomes even more obvious. The choices we make today to make tomorrow better are our strategy.

In truth we still don’t know. We don’t know why Facebook succeeded and Friendster failed. Why General Magic struggled but Airbnb made it to the other side. Anyone who promises a detailed road map is unaware of how complex creating the future is. All we can do is look for the right conditions, not expect a guarantee.

I’m not arguing that the system is conscious, or has explicit goals, or is run by an evil supergenius. But the easiest way to understand a system is to imagine that it might be. The sun doesn’t “want” the Earth to rotate around it, but it sure acts like it does. Systems want something. Before you engage with one, investing your time and your passion, it’s worth understanding what the system wants.

A chicken is merely an egg’s way of making another egg. And a bride is simply the wedding industrial complex’s way of making sure that the venue is full next week. Filled with people who might be the next bride. Today might be going well, but resilient systems have feedback loops in place to maintain stability, and they invest in the future by creating frameworks to ensure that they’ll persist.

Just as a river is a lake with a current, a strategy is only possible when we consider time. As time moves forward, we find different conditions, different options, and different challenges. Our strategy is the narrative for how we will engage with our project over time.

Guy #1 is the crazy dude who starts dancing, alone, at the outdoor concert. He’s on the hillside, doing his thing. Guy #2 is brave and supportive. He joins in and starts dancing. But it’s Guy #3 that changes the dynamic. His presence makes it safe for people 4, 5, 6, and 7 to join in. And now, sitting still is more socially risky than getting up. So people 8 through 20 arrive. And now it’s a movement. We spend a lot of time glorifying Guy #1. But the real work is to see time. To acknowledge that nothing happens all at once. Guy #3 is the one we need to focus on.

Perhaps you learned how to build a campfire as a kid. You’ll need logs, certainly. But you will also need kindling. The bigger the logs, the more kindling. The wetter the wood, the more kindling. Our strategy fails every time the size of the logs exceeds our supply of kindling.

It begins with a nucleus. This core group shares a desire. Perhaps they’re frustrated, left out, seeking something better or something new. They are not typical. Offer that group connection, status, forward motion, opportunity, and insight. This feeling is often different from what the masses will eventually adopt. Second, maximize the chances for a small win. Small wins are evidence of progress. They create group cohesion, commitment, and most of all give the nucleus something to point to.

most of the people we encounter are skeptics. They’re looking for an easy way to keep things the same. They’re uncomfortable with the tension that change brings, and will conceal that fear with objections that seem like thoughtful feedback. It’s not. If a change is gaining traction with the nucleus that can move it forward, a difficult but essential part of our leadership is to ignore everyone else.

the job of a sales team isn’t to persuade people to buy from us. It’s to find the people who WANT to try something new, and to politely and eagerly send everyone else on their way. The job of the marketer is to make something so remarkable that this tiny group of adopters can’t stop telling their peers. They’re the ones that get the word out, not you. This phenomenon has been clear for decades, and yet people keep looking for a shortcut.

In 1995, Jackie Fenn developed the Gartner Hype Cycle. It’s not a cycle at all, but instead highlights, as Rogers’ curve did, how an idea spreads through our culture.

Scaffolding is the cultural and organizational support we get at the beginning of adopting a new idea or practice.

Lev Vygotsky described scaffolding a hundred years ago in his work on child development and learning. He introduced the concept of the “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD). The ZPD refers to the distance between what an individual can do without help and what they can do with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.

Scaffolding and Marketing This gives us the chance to re-imagine our task as marketers. It’s not about getting the word out. It’s not about hustle or hype or promotion or hoopla. Marketers build scaffolding. We create the conditions for people who want to go where we’re going to join us. We use tension and status and affiliation to help people get from where they are to where they seek to go. What’s the user experience like? What’s the story behind the story? And what will I tell the others? A brand isn’t a logo. It’s an invitation and a promise, an expectation about who someone can become, and what the journey will be like.

Competing for market share, dominance or the last pastry pushes us to think urgently about the game that’s in front of us. There are several approaches to consider: Punching down feels ungallant, but it’s actually the most common approach. Using our strengths, we eliminate weaker competition by highlighting the benefits of our dominant offering. IBM kept the computer market to itself for decades. Taylor Swift keeps selling records. The market leader offers a combination of safety, skill, reliability and leverage that makes it easy for them to serve existing systems. Punching up can be the best option for the insurgent newcomer. Going where the dominant player can’t or won’t go turns your smaller size and experience into an asset. Staying in your lane is often the right strategy for a market leader facing an insurgent. In Walmart’s case, management understood that shifting their financial structure, business model and focus to shut out Amazon would require that they walk away from decades of growth in markets where they were already dominant. Cooperation is the most often overlooked option. Alliances, networks and rewiring information flow create new opportunities because value is added, not simply captured. There are actually very few zero-sum games, we simply need to use our imagination. What doesn’t work? Insisting. Trying harder. Being just like the leader, but not them.