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

by Seth Godin

• What systems would need to change for my project to succeed? How can I create the conditions for that change? • Where will I cause tension? What resistance should I anticipate from others (and myself)? • What are the status roles and affiliations at play? • How big is my circle of us and circle of now? What can I do to expand them? What about my audience’s circles? • Why would someone talk about or recommend my project to others? • How can I create the conditions for a network effect to develop around my project? • Where are the feedback loops, and which ones move my work forward or slow it down? • Which games are being played? Who sets the rules? • Which games are winnable, which are oppositional? And which games don’t need to be won, simply played? • What can I learn to increase my odds of success? Where can I gain that knowledge? • Where is the smallest viable audience? How do they think about status and affiliation? • Which false proxies are likely to distract me? What matters? • Am I taking advantage of the shift being caused by a change agent? Or do I need to become one? • What asset would transform my project? How do I acquire it? • If an early adopter talks about my project, what will they say? • Where is the empathy? Does my work align with the actual motivations and interests of the audience? • What is the tension that I’m eagerly creating in the system by showing up with my change? • Am I building the scaffolding people will need to adopt and...