My thinking can often drift off into the details. A strategy talk will quickly become me latching onto a small problem and the conversation or thinking process stops being big picture. To avoid this I try to think through problems with someone. The process of talking about something, putting words to vague feeling and being nudged forward with good questions helps me create a plan of action.

Strategy builds on our fundamental beliefs: Jack Walsh is known for his “people first, strategy and everything else second”. I liked that. I believe that when you surround yourself with the right people, things can more easily fall into place and work becomes fun. I’ve been on both sides of this. Working with great people where the work flows. And working with people where I’ve been reincarnated as Sisyphus.

But knowing yourself isn’t always easy. We feel our fundamental beliefs but need to put them into words and communicate them. I find that hard. Recently I had the situation where I had to make a difficult decision. I ended up using a rather interesting decision making approach: gut, data, gut. “there’s no perfect data” and “there’s no perfect intuition”. The data looked great. The gut kinda looked good. But something was nagging me. And I walked away from the deal. I’ll never know if it was right or wrong. But had to trust my instinct. At a younger age, I’d probably have jumped in.

Summary: trying to know myself, and my weaknesses helps build a stronger strategy.