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

by Seth Godin

Trust leads to trust. Influence creates influence. The network effect is the dynamic of our time, and most of us don’t even notice it.

This isn’t a competition of effort or obvious performance metrics. The work doesn’t get the network effect it deserves based on how much you insist on people joining you. Instead, networks catch on because the network being built is attractive, sticky, and persistent. Does it work better for me if my friends join in? Networks create value for those who choose to join them, and part of that value comes from the status and affiliation bump that evangelists of the system receive. People only invite others to join a network if they benefit from doing so. If you don’t begin with a network effect as a significant benefit for users, it’s almost impossible to build it in later.

What people do might not be aligned with what they want.

Instead, we’re working to create the conditions for people to choose to do useful things while seeking what they’ve always wanted. And what they want is status and affiliation. Some combination of joy, honor, and achievement. A place to be safe and a way to excel.

Culture defeats tactics, every time, and culture is the most resilient component of a system. Often we have the opportunity to do judo instead of surgery. To embrace the goals and momentum of the system and direct it in a better direction. We don’t change the system as much as we change the outputs the system creates.

It’s easier to help someone find what they want than it is to change what they want.

Social adhesion is culture. People like us do things like this. The unspoken rules that cause us to do things that might not be easy or in our short-term interest. The vague (or pronounced) feelings we have when going against the grain. And resistance to substitution is at the heart of every market we engage in. Why this and not that? What prevents a constant race for cheaper or more convenient? Shouldn’t everything be a rational commodity? Why stick when we can switch? Social adhesion and resistance to substitution often work at cross purposes, creating an oscillating and unstable equilibrium between change and the status quo. “Everyone else is doing it” meets “I don’t want to go first.”

Loss aversion: Losing feels worse than winning feels good, and it’s easier to stand pat and protect what we have. Confirmation bias: It’s nice to feel like we made a good choice. The group encourages its members to look for external signs that existing choices were appropriate, and thus diminishes a desire to look for substitutes. Tribalism: The strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social group (often leading to hostility or discrimination against those perceived as outsiders) can reinforce social adhesion within groups and make it harder for new ideas or practices to spread across group boundaries. But most of all, in the last century, we took our instincts for social adherence and substitution aversion and built them into our culture.

When bringing a project to the world, it pays to see the systems that will be pushing it forward or holding it back. Here’s what’s worth investigating: Who gains or loses in status from changes in the system? Are there forms of communication and interoperability wired into the system? What are the forces that oppose substitutions? Are the individuals or nodes with the incentive and power to hold things back or push them forward? And are there other nodes that can work in opposition? Are there behaviors that seem like superstitions based in history instead of reality? Where are the feedback loops that amplify or diminish signals?

Beyond the conflicting agendas faced by complex systems, the entire system is often under tension as well. When technology changes, or public policy shifts, the system itself scrambles to find and maintain equilibrium. We most easily see a system when the system bends under stress.

The innovator: Technology and insight are the most common and powerful ways to change a system. The innovation creates opportunities and threats, and the tension that builds around it forces existing players in the system to respond or react. Claude.ai and other LLM’s are a current example. The work they do can become a change agent, but right now, the innovator is simply focused on solving an interesting problem.

The educator: Information is actually a measurable force of nature, as much as a rainstorm or a meteor. When information is shared and spread, the system shifts.

Probability is nothing but a report on how the deck is stacked. If we are going to choose our future, it helps to have a hint about what to expect there.

The future is unknown. Any project we take on, any change we seek to make, might not work. We can’t do strategy without embracing the knowledge that we’re taking a risk. If you need a guarantee, you’ll need the world to stay still. Strategy requires being smart about how we invest our time, money, and assets.

And the systems question: If we get a yes this time, is the next call going to go more easily? Are they dependent events, getting easier as we go, or are we trapped in this loop? Visualize the cards and you can make smarter choices about which moments, which nodes, which changes, and which systems you’re going to focus on.

The future sends us reports on what it’s going to be like. None of us have seen it, but it’s possible to make assertions about what is to come. We may have to walk away from our drawing tomorrow, no matter how hard it was to create, but the sketching pays off because it offers context and structure for what might come next.

No one is controlling the dice, but if we’re smart, we can choose a set of dice that are more likely to get us what we seek. Loaded dice and a stacked deck can be found if we look for them.

There are dice and they are rolled, there are cards and they are shuffled. Random events happen all the time.

Strategy involves the hard work of looking at probabilities and building likely outcomes into your plans. It might not be in our control, but we can still count the cards.

We have been indoctrinated to seek certainty, go back to normal, celebrate the end of change, seek the right answer and the peace of mind that comes with it.

Once we see the system, we can discern how it’s the same (and different) from the one we’re facing. And once we understand a system, we can work within it and we can change

Positioning is a service. It’s a beacon to your customers, patients, or constituents. It says, “If you’re looking for X, that’s what we have. On the other hand, plenty of people are looking for Y, and you’ll find that from our colleagues over there.”

But you (and your customers) benefit when you have a strategy to get to the edge you seek to live on.

When you honestly and accurately position the competition, they cease to become your competition, because you sell something that they don’t sell.

Build something that fills a square, and it becomes yours to defend.

Successful positions work because they have empathy for people, not because they represent a universal sort of better.

Your successful competition stands for something. When you choose to stand for something that contrasts with that, they can’t follow you.

“Everyone” is shorthand for hope and an unwillingness to see time, systems, and strategies. “Someone” is far more effective.

And my answers are always the same, in the form of more questions: • If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over? • Is this objective really what you want? • Do your assets match the project you’ve taken on? • Why would the nodes in the system you’re engaging with care enough to listen to you or take action? • What will they tell their colleagues and friends? People with answers to these questions rarely end up with a marketing problem.

When we run out of time, we’re done. When we run out of money, we’re done. And if we’re done before we’ve made an impact, the entire effort is wasted. The scale of your project needs to match your assets. When we take on too big a change, for too many people, we underdeliver, and all is lost.

When we extend ourselves beyond our means, we create short-term pressure and a downward spiral if the market doesn’t respond on time. The process is simple but easy to forget: overwhelm the smallest viable audience with a solution that creates the conditions for them to take action. Repeat.

Changing course and exploring your options are far cheaper at the start than they are at the end.

The discipline of project management is to insist, “We’re not going to write a line of code until you sign off on the storyboards” or “We’re not going to lay a brick until the plans are approved.”

And so a new project begins. Thrash again. At the beginning. Repeat.

Opportunity cost is real. Time is not infinite, and the scarcity of time creates constraints. There’s only a bit of room in your shopping cart. If you have this, you can’t have that. One reason that we avoid choosing a strategy is that we’re not comfortable walking away from all the other possible strategies. Rather than celebrate the paths not taken, we take no path at all. If you’re going to say “yes” to something, be prepared to show us all the things that you would have to say “no” to in order to make room.

The question isn’t: “How is it going?” It’s: “Compared to what?” This time, effort, or money you’re spending—what could it have gone to instead?

Projects are not simply tasks. All projects: • Interact with other people • Have a beginning and an end • Seek to deliver a desired result • Have constraints • Involve unknowns When we bring intent to our project, we’re more likely to avoid drama. And reducing risk is about investing in avoiding problems before they occur.

“Tell everyone about your strategy.” Tactics shift, but strategies are for the long-haul.

255. Successful Projects • They aren’t static because they move through time and time moves through them. • They accomplish something. • They serve systems and enable their participants to get to where they’re going. • They create the conditions for people to spread an idea. • They create resilient structures that thrive when the world changes. • They evolve based on useful inputs.

Ahead of us is a dip, a place of difficulty, where most people quit. Our job is to ensure we have sufficient momentum, resources, and energy to get through that dip, because tomorrow is another chance to begin our project again. Don’t run out of time, don’t run out of money. Hard decisions now ensure easier decisions tomorrow.

The larger the team, the more we need to lean into the process of communication. It begins by being clear about our roles, our purpose, the change we seek to make, and the people we’re seeking to serve.

The world changes. We’re changing it. Without a resilient communications system, the project stalls. Projects require strategy, but our strategy is directly related to our ability to ship the work.