Priya wrote the grant, and she won it. Two years later, her best volunteers are at the school instead of the pantry, Saturday hours are cut, and the food-box waiting list is the longest it’s ever been. She never asked: what will this yes push out?

In this episode: why strategy means choosing (Roger Martin and Michael Porter); a three-question filter for any yes; three kinds of no (the clear no, the not-yet and the redirect); why no is so hard (loss aversion, scarcity, relationships); and why the aim isn’t to say no more, but to say yes on purpose.

The Pause: What’s the first thing I’d stop doing to make room for this? If you can’t name it, the yes isn’t free.

Try this week, your no list: three things you’ll say no to this month, and the sentence you’d use for each. Then say it out loud, once.

Play Yes Machine: run a small plumbing business for eight weeks and see what every yes costs. Free at play.mystrategysquad.com.

Further reading:

• Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win (2013)
• Michael Porter, “What Is Strategy?” Harvard Business Review (1996)
• Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference (2016)
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
• Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity (2013)

Weekly notes at read.mystrategysquad.com.

Strategizing skills, without the suits. Everything’s free.

Play the free strategy games: play.mystrategysquad.com

Read the weekly notes: read.mystrategysquad.com

Watch Play-by-Play on Twitch: twitch.tv/mystrategysquad

Website: mystrategysquad.com

Strategizing Skills without the Suits.

Dale the plumber is sure his customers pick him because he’s cheap. It’s why he hasn’t raised his prices in four years. There’s just one thing: he’s never asked any of them. So he makes three calls, and not one customer mentions price.

In this episode: why we grab the first explanation and stop looking (Richard Rumelt calls it “quick closure”); why your edge is a hypothesis, a strong guess you test before you bet on it; three simple tests (ask, look at your losses, and the copy test); and why testing your own theory is so hard: optimism, sunk cost and friends who love you but aren’t your market.

The Pause: Before you commit more money, more months or more of your heart, ask: what would I need to see to know I’m wrong? Write it down and date it.

Try this week, three calls: Call two people who chose you and one who didn’t. Ask why they chose you, who else they considered, and what almost made them go elsewhere. Write down their exact words.

Further reading:

• Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy (2011), Chapters 16 and 17
• Richard Rumelt, The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists (2022)
• John Kay and Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers (2020)

Play the free strategy games: play.mystrategysquad.com

Read the weekly notes: read.mystrategysquad.com

Watch Play-by-Play on Twitch: twitch.tv/mystrategysquad

Website: mystrategysquad.com

Strategizing Skills without the Suits.

Your board wants a strategic plan. So you spend six weekends on it: a revised vision and mission, five goals, twenty-three action items, a color-coded timeline. Forty pages. The board loves it. It goes on a shelf. Three months later, an opportunity turns up that isn’t in the plan, and nobody opens the binder.

Why? Because a plan isn’t a strategy. In this episode: where the idea that “strategy equals a plan” came from, why Henry Mintzberg said planning takes things apart while strategy puts them together, four words people use wrong (strategic, goal, mission and vision, tactics), and why even the experts can’t agree on what strategy means.

The Pause: Before the next plan goes anywhere, ask: what does this plan make us say no to? If the answer is “nothing,” it’s a wish list with dates on it.

Try this week, the plan autopsy: Take a plan you’ve got and mark every line G for goal, T for task, or C for choice. Then count your Cs.

Further reading:

• Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994)
• Henry Mintzberg, “The Strategy Concept I: Five Ps for Strategy,” California Management Review (1987)
• Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy (2011)
• Ronda-Pupo and Guerras-Martín, “Dynamics of the evolution of the strategy concept 1962–2008,” Strategic Management Journal (2012)

Strategizing skills, without the suits. Everything’s free: play the games at mystrategysquad.com, and join us on Twitch and Substack.

Play the free strategy games: play.mystrategysquad.com

Read the weekly notes: read.mystrategysquad.com

Watch Play-by-Play on Twitch: twitch.tv/mystrategysquad

Website: mystrategysquad.com

Strategizing Skills without the Suits.