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

by Seth Godin

A good decision is simply the best analysis of the existing information.

If others are regularly outperforming your strategy, there could be four reasons: • They could have a systemic head start—this

They could have an asset advantage—this is a form of head start.

They could have access to better information.

They might be better at making decisions

Tamsen Webster points out that people rarely get “believer’s remorse.” Instead, they will do almost anything to defend their identity and the system they’re in.

The purpose of our culture isn’t to enable capitalism. Capitalism is here because it enables us to build the culture we choose to live in.

If culture is the way a system protects itself, community action is the way we push back against culture becoming toxic.

What changes a system is community action. Persistent, consistent, and focused community action.

Resilient systems evolve to resist short-term pressure. They will seek to outlast you. And this means that the side with the longest attention span wins. That side is usually the status quo. They have more resources and a history of patiently waiting for the insurgents to lose interest.

We change systems by building our own systems—systems that cause change as their output.

Culture defeats motivation.

Culture is a system’s way of defending itself, and if we’re to build a system, we should be mindful of the culture we create.

Organizations that struggle with strategy also seem to have a lot of meetings.

Part of what it means to be a creative artist is to dive willingly into work that might not work. And the other part, the part that’s just as important, is to openly admit when you’ve gone the “wrong” direction, and eagerly walk away, even (and especially) when it’s personal.

There are thirty people over there who are waiting for you to help connect them, lead them, or make things better. But if you’re still defending the stuck project over here, the one you put so much into, you won’t be able to show up for them. Customers, partners, clients and students who need your voice or your product aren’t going to benefit from it because you’re working so hard to dig yourself out of a previous hole, a situation that is now harder than ever to work your way through. It’s easy to focus on the problem right in front of you and to decide that this problem (and only this problem) is the problem that you need to solve. But there’s a cost to everything, and the opportunity lost when you’re doing this is real, even when you don’t notice it.

What happened yesterday already happened. It’s a gift and an asset from your previous self. You don’t have to accept it if you don’t want to.

questions worth asking about your project and your strategy: • Who is this project for? Who is my smallest viable audience? • What change do I seek to make with this project? • What is my strategy to make this change happen? Can I articulate it clearly? • What resources and assets do I have to dedicate to this project?

• What is my timeline for this project? When does it ship and what is my deadline for calling it quits? • What systems am I currently working within?

• 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...

How will early successes of my project make later successes more likely? • What are the tropes and requirements of the genre I’ve chosen? • How do we gain insight into the probability that our assertions will work out? • Can I make it easier for others to decide? • Where are the non-believers, and how do I avoid them? • How does my project tap into existing social desires for status, affiliation, and/or security to help propel its adoption and spread? • What frayed edges, anomalies, or contradictions in the current system could serve as leverage points for introducing my alternative? • What metrics is the current system optimizing for?

How does my project seek to shift part of the culture from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset? • What incumbents might perceive my project as a threat to their power or position?

How can I design for network effects, enabling each new participant to create value for all the other participants? • What sunk costs might prevent potential stakeholders from embracing my approach? How can I lower the perceived switching costs? • What are the common scripts or objections I expect to encounter?

• How will engaging with my project help people become who they aspire to be? What identity and worldview does it invite them to step into? • How can I lower the barrier to entry and make it feel easy and irresistible for people to take the first step with my offering?

• How do we lower the decision-making barrier to invite participation? Can we make it easy for people to say, “I was right all along”? • How can I avoid becoming trapped by sunk costs if my initial strategy proves ill-fated? When should I pivot vs. persist? Where’s the dip? • Can I improve project hygiene? What are the standards and conversations I’m avoiding? • How will I resist the social gravity and “pull to the center” over time as my project matures and faces pressure to conform?