Max Mckeown

Your Strategic Self…

Strategy is about shaping the future. But planning doesn’t always work in the real world. That’s the reason for this book – to help you to use strategy to figure out what to do now to get what you really want later. This book can help make strategy work more often.

There are strategy tools and processes that can help – but the real heart of strategy is the strategist. It’s what you know, how you think, and how you get people to care enough about what you are doing to achieve your goals.

It’s also about setting in motion the sequence of events that will shape the future in a way that you like. The more you understand the people who make events happen and the connections between what they do and those events, the smarter you will be.

You have already used strategy to get a lot of what you have. You got a job. Or you got an education to get a job.  You might have saved money for a holiday or a home. Maybe you romanced your partner, wife, or husband. You did something in the past to try and get something better in the future.

Becoming a strategic thinker – a strategist – is about getting better at shaping events. In the business world you need to understand how strategy is usually done.  You need to know how to create strategy that convinces others to support you (including your boss or shareholders). And you need to know how to make strategy deliver success in the real world. Strategy that works.

There is no guarantee that the future will turn out the way you want. Just writing a plan does not mean that the plan will happen. The world is more complex than our ability to plan, but that’s part of what an effective strategist learns to accept. You learn that reacting and responding to events is just as important as planning.

Some business schools and consultancies have sold the promise that strategy can solve everything. In their hands, it has become a cult that believes in the magical power of a few models. They have weakened practical emphasis on the art of strategy and left some non-MBAs wondering if there is any room for entrepreneurial instinct.

Others have become cynical about strategy. They hear the word and disengage. They expect bad or boring things to come from any strategic planning process. They predict job cuts or mindless changes. Or just expect meaningless waffle that means nothing in the real world. And there is some truth to this view.

Yet we have been trying to shape their future for as long as we have been human. It is in our nature to interpret our experience to provide short cuts for a better future. This is what strategy is about and how it can be of value in the real world.

To become an effective strategist, you start with yourself.  Start by understanding how one thing leads to another. Get yourself an education in the basics of strategy tools and models. Pay more attention to where you are, what’s happening around you, and how trends create opportunities to get to where you want to be.

(Excerpt from The Strategy Book by Max Mckeown)