Strategy is difficult
There I said it. Strategy is about winning and that ain’t easy. They call it “average” for a reason, because that’s the central tendency of everyone. Yep, scatterplot. A LOT of people end up near the middle of the thing. Sure, you’re not the worst, but you’re probably not the best either. Why? The world is a broad plateau and as Thomas Friedman said 20 years ago, The World is Flat (affiliate link), we are competing in a global market.
Trust me, when I failed at my first job after college, I felt quite average.
Strategy is not just one thing
Strategy is tough because it’s not just one thing. It’s a combination of activities that accumulate over time, to the point that it seems unassailable. Think Apple design and ecosystem. IKEA maniacal first-principle of design-for-value. McDonald’s six-sigma reliability to give you the same hamburger 12,000 miles apart (Yes, ChatGPT dug that up for me in 3 seconds).
- It’s more than “the brand”
- It’s more than one sparkly CEO or leader
- It’s more than a pharmaceutical patent, or patent fencing strategy
- It’s more than a Permian basin oil deposit
- It’s more than one thing
Strategy is a set of choices
For those recent Emory graduates, I am telling you now. You can’t be all things to all people. You will have multiple identities at work and in your life. You cannot please everyone, you gotta choose.
Thankfully – your life is not random. Nope, you can create a cycle of activities – a beautiful flywheel of things you know, you like, and you relate to. A cadre of people who know, trust, and love you. A network of alumni and informal ties that create net relational equity for you. Good people. Crafting your life, and profession.
Thankfully – you are lucky. Warren Buffett calls it the ovarian lottery. Born in a developed country. Born with all your limbs. Educated. Fully sighted. When I heard Buffett speak (yes, I was that lucky) in 2004, he said [paraphrase because it was not recorded, and my memory is not that good] “Everyone in this room, your glass is 95% full.”
Want proof? Think of 5 questions you have about the world, career. Then give yourself 1 week to get as smart as possible on that topic. a) ChatGPT first (of course) b) listen to 10 hours of podcasts on the topic c) conduct 3 informational interviews of 20 minutes with experts. Then, create a 1 pager of your key takeaways. You will impress yourself. You are way more powerful and empowered than you might have thought.
Thankfully – you are curious. Why else would you be reading a blog about strategy, career, and life? What kind of nerd-town are you? It’s that kind of grinder curiosity that makes you special. That’s why 20 years from now, you will be tinkering with the newest apps and gadgets. Self-admiring, isn’t that awesome about us?
Thankfully – mistakes are not fatal. Probably the opposite. These experiments and micro-failures (if you can even call them that) thicken our skin, give us cool stories to tell, and tell us what is not working. For most of us reading this blog post, you have a safety net around you (a personal balance sheet, a job, a rare skill set, a spouse, parents, friends, a car, a good attention span, a friend who will give you advice).
AND, I make mistakes all the time here, and here, and here, and here. We all do.
Find your unfair advantage
This is slide that I shared with a room of 50+ senior managers and associate principals. These are wicked smart professionals, who make their living advising executives. The key message: create a strategy around yourself.
John, how does this apply to you?
As someone who teaches this stuff, I thought it might be revelatory to share a bit about myself. How did John craft, stumble, invest, geek out, enjoy, discover, build on my own strategy. How we got to ConsultantsMind.
1. Skills, knowledge, talent, resources
Was fascinated by microeconomics (hat tip: PG) in college, but was an unremarkable student. First job as a stockbroker was a fairly poor choice. Learned a lot of sales, but frankly was bad at the job. Fired myself, went to South Korea and taught English at a public junior high school. (hat tip: mom)
Absolutely loved it there – the kids, the learning, the culture, the food. Teaching was a gas. Loved it – and now, 30 years later, still love teaching. That spark then – only because I failed my first job, fled the US – started a fire.
Semiconductor manufacturing. I chanced on a newspaper job listing – yes, the paper version of Indeed.com (circa 1997) for a strategic planning role. Spent the next 6 years on Excel, PowerPoint, quarterly business reviews, annual operating plans, SWOT, competitive intelligence, balance scorecards, win/loss analysis, lots of workshops.
In the first 10 years of my career, it wasn’t skills, knowledge, or talent. It was people.
You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with – Jim Rohn
People helped me get good experiences and gave me a chance. People let me in the metaphorical kitchen, and gave me a chance to learn cooking. (hat tip: SB, TK, YIL, CYL, JWL). The biggest resources were the people and projects in my life. You will see them listed out with initials.
2. Learning, professional growth
Emory is where I “did college right.” Goizueta Business School. Learned from the best (RS, DB, JS, KT, LGT, JR, MS, KJ, PN, SS, JB). Competed in 9 case competitions and just enjoyed the luxury product called, full-time MBA.
Learning is so much fun. At Deloitte Consulting, I was on the training team (RC, CR, MM) and loved all of it. Putting together training content, setting up the logistics, recruiting partners to teach, being a mini-teacher. The content was kinda cool too – training consultants and the talking about the craft of client service. Lots of storytelling from practitioners and war stories. Lots of “I made this huge mistake and survived” stories.
Enjoyed chatting with partners (AG, MS, BR, SS, BL, AG) about what makes great projects, meaningful client relationships, and how to flow into difficult work and have fun. At Emory and Deloitte, I was sponging up learning.
Education is not just about learning facts, but about learning how to learn – Sal Khan
Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten – B.F. Skinner
Learning is so democratized. You can learn so much for free, it’s shocking. Here are 40+ of my favorite podcast interviews here. In fact, on Spotify premium, you can listen to 15 hours of audiobooks a month. With the Libby app, you can borrow a dozen books / audiobooks at a time.
Free education is abundant, all over the Internet. It’s the desire to learn that is scarce. – Naval Ravikant
Interested in Management Consulting? Made this Coursera specialization (75 videos) for you here.
3. Projects, Deliverables, effort, practice
Yes, a management consultant for 12 years. Lots of research, data collection, pivot tables, client interviews, meeting minutes, ERP, Procure-to-Pay, Visio, <ALT> D + F + F, best practices, vendor negotiations, and PPT.
Lifetime platinum at Marriott. Rolled my Tumi roller bag all-around New York, Chicago, Augusta, Seattle, Richmond, Jersey City, White Plains, Minneapolis, and many other cities you could not find on a map. Yes, Tumi is worth it. Expensive, so I recommend that you go “bourgeois and cheap” – Tumi outlet.
Yes, I did work.
Any job that pays you $$$,$$$ will beat you down – a lot of the time. As my brother-in-law (KRL) eloquently told me 15 years ago, “attorneys attract problems.” As I heard yesterday (MH) a quote from Mad Men, “That’s what the money’s for.” There are times to grind and times to flow. I strongly recommend grinding the first 15 years.
Amateurs hope. Professionals work – Garson Kanin
You are not your resume, you are your work – Seth Godin
4. Internal network, peers, friends
Perhaps this is different in the engineering world or in the creative arts, but in professional services (management consulting, B2B marketing, and teaching), it’s all about the relationships. Peers make you better (FTR, ABS, LB, SNAP, AJ), friends keep you in the boat (PW, BMS, NLF, RB, LL, RS, KRL, ITG), others lead by example (SB, GN, WW, JS, GY, GW, RR, KL, CV, KI). Finding your team is so rare, and so critical (SK, CKL, CKG). Oh, and mom and dad, love you too.
I get by with a little help from my friends – Beatles
5. Client relationships, referrals, ecosystem
I asked a successful friend of mine, “How do you generate business?” His response [paraphrased] “I don’t know, I just have been doing it for a long time, and people call me.”
Well, after 7 years, I can’t say that I am at that level, but I will say that having clients is awesome. Getting referrals and add on business is even better. Clients are saying, “I trust you, and here is more business.”
Super-enjoy teaching BBA, MBA, Executive Education. The Coursera. The Emeritus. The training. The stories.
Complaint level = 0
Greatness is consistently driven by a deep love of the work – Maria Popova
It’s a set of activities that builds on itself. Management consulting is a great example. 12 years experience. Teach it. Write blogs about it here. Record videos on it here. Write a book about it here. Repeat.
6. Emerging strategy, “oh this works well”
As I started to teach strategy, this was one of my biggest learnings. Strategy is not just “thinking” in abstract, but it’s also experimenting, adapting to the customers’ reactions, and generally, hustling like an owner.
For me, the Covid-19 remote teaching experience was pivotal. I routinely “flip the classroom” with preWatch videos of the content, which then frees up class time to engage, ask questions, and learn from each other. It works, and I keep doing it.
For me, short 20 min phone calls are better than 90 minute lunches. Is it something I can help with? Then text me, and let’s chit-chat for 20 min today (not schedule a lunch 3 months from now). It works, and I keep doing it.
For me, I would rather write it down in a blog post and send it to you, then try to “remember what I think” about a topic, on the spot, or by ZOOM. It works, and I keep doing it. Been blogging since 2011.
I will get by, I will survive – Grateful Dead
Does this always work? Of course not. There are workshops I don’t do any more. There are clients who don’t call. This is inevitable, and it took a long time before it stopped hurting.
7. Serendipity, luck, grace
Depending on which day you catch me, I will say that A LOT of it was luck.
- Me marrying my best friend (SK)
- Me getting my first job in Korea (SB)
- Me studying at Emory (JB)
- Me working at Deloitte (BR)
- Me working at Philips (PW)
- Me teaching at Emory (LGT, MS, RS)
- Me blogging (KRL)
Which them reminds me of the first sentence in Purpose Drive Life (affiliate link), “It’s not about you.”
The more I practice, the luckier I get – Gary Player