The part of the job that decides which problems are worth having. Strategy is a choice about where to compete and how to win there, written down so other people can act on it, and it is distinct from a vision, a roadmap and a backlog in ways that matter.
| # | Lesson | The question it answers | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Strategy, Vision and Roadmap | What is each one, and what do you get when you conflate them? | ✅ |
| 02 | Where to Play and How to Win | Which two choices actually constitute a strategy? | ✅ |
| 03 | Moats for Software | Switching cost, data, network, scale, brand: which are real and which are stories? | |
| 04 | Reading the Competition Honestly | What does a competitor’s behaviour tell you that their marketing does not? | |
| 05 | The Strategy Document | How do you write one page that states the bets and the refusals? | |
| 06 | Build, Partner or Buy | How do you make the strategic version of this decision, with numbers? | |
| 07 | Platform and Ecosystem Bets | When is becoming a platform worth what it costs? | |
| 08 | Sequencing a Strategy | What has to be true first, and what does that imply about this quarter? | |
| 09 | Communicating Strategy | How do you get a hundred people to act on one page? | |
| 10 | When Strategy Should Change | What are the signals, and what does changing too often cost? | |
| 11 | Strategy Under a Moving Model Frontier | How do you plan when next year’s model may do it for free? | |
| 12 | Worked: A Strategy Document | One real strategy, written out, with the refusals and the falsifier |