How do you recognize a bullsh*t strategy?

One, they are expressed as goals, without saying anything about how to reach those goals.

Two, they are generic and shared by pretty much all the other brands and companies in your category.

Three, they are fluffy and written in such a loose and broad way that there are no obvious actions falling out of it. What does "leverage synergies" mean? What do you do with that?

A strategy is the unique value a business provides to the market.

A unique value is the benefit your customers get from your product, which they can't get anywhere else, and which a hell of a lot of people want or need.

The intellectual content of a strategy - the thinking behind it - is only half the battle. The other half is converting that thinking into a strategy that is actually usable.

So what can you do?

You can put your strategy through the subjectivity test where you remove all subjective language, anything like 'good', 'great', 'world-class', 'best' and 'smart', and see if there are any substance left.

You could also play the opposite game where you ask yourself if the opposite of your strategy also make logical sense. If the answer is yes, then you probably have a good strategy on your hands because it represents a true strategic choice.

PowerPoint or Word?

Most strategies float around in "The Deck". A nice long PowerPoint presentation with a few pillars, onions, missions, visions, and the like. A PowerPoint lets you get away with all the things that wouldn't fly in a conversation or email.

Instead, just write it the way you'd tell it. 

A single page of A4 with a few paragraphs of argument and explanation, culminating in the punchline ("therefore we are going to do X"). Your job is simply to explain it so that anyone who reads it, gets it.

There should be no difference between your written explanation and your spoken one.

Even a super-crisp strategy is still, ultimately, going to be fairly abstract, so it's important you really land the idea (and get the ball rolling) by listing some key actions arising from it.
  • What must you do to deliver on this?
  • What needs to change?
  • What do you need to stop doing?
  • What needs to be added?

If a strategy doesn't prompt ideas automatically then it has a problem - probably one of being too abstract, and not practically grounded enough.

"No Bullsh*t strategy" by Alex M H Smith

Yes, yes, yes!

I'm a Yes-person! Yes to everything and everybody.

I don't think I am alone. We say yes too often.

Saying 'No' to people when they ask you? Hell no. I don't want to disappoint people or hurt any feelings. I want to be polite. And what if I miss out on something if I turn it down?

But I also know that my reluctance to say "no" leaves me overcommitted and overwhelmed.

Zoe Chance decided to let 'no' be her default response for an entire month, which she dubbed 'NOvember'. As the month progressed, she started to feel less stressed and more in control of her own decisions, her time, and her life.

She started giving her MBA students a 24-Hour 'No' Challenge. To practice saying no! 

It's about being kind to yourself. People won't hate you. You may find it empowering.

Sometimes you must respond with more than a "No" or "No, thank you".
Your boss assigns you yet another task when you are already swamped?

"I'd be happy to do it, but I am already behind a couple of other projects. Should we reprioritize what I've got on my plate?"

Michael Bungay Stanier says the secret to saying 'No' is to shift the focus and learn how to say 'Yes' more slowly. What gets us into trouble is how quickly we commit. Saying yes more slowly means asking more questions.
  • Why are you asking me?
  • Whom else have you asked?
  • When you say this is urgent, what do you mean?
  • According to what standard does this need to be completed? By when?
  • If I couldn't do all of this, but could do just a part, what part would you have me to do?
  • What do you want me to take off my plate so I can do this?

I read somewhere that the best and most polite excuse is just to say you have a rule, like “I have a rule that I am home for bath time with the kids every night" or "I have a rule that I don’t decide on the phone".

People respect rules and they accept that the rule allows you no choice.

Or simply use Derek Sivers "Hell yeah or no" rule?

If you feel anything less than "Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!" about something, just say no.

When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to really throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say "HELL YEAH".

How do you say no?

What are the skills that get us hired or promoted?

We all have our practical skills which can be acquired through education, training programs, learning by doing. Skills we are not born knowing. Something we must teach. "Hard skills" as we often say.

In the book 'The Song of Significance', Seth Godin says we let ourselves off the hook when it comes to skills like 

  • Decision-making, 
  • Eager participation, 
  • Dancing with fear, 
  • Speaking with authority, 
  • Working in teams, 
  • Seeing the truth, 
  • Speaking the truth, 
  • Inspiring others, 
  • Doing more than we are asked, 
  • Caring, and 
  • Being willing to change things.

He says that we tend to underinvest in training on these skills, fearful that these things are innate and can't be taught. 

We downplay them, calling them "soft skills", making it easy for us to move on to something seemingly more urgent.

These are interpersonal skills. Leadership skills. Human skills. Skills that amplify your hard vocational skills.

Adam Grant refers to "character skills" in his hook 'Hidden Potential', which are never too late to build.

  • Take initiative to ask questions, 
  • Seek information, 
  • Get along and collaborate with peers, 
  • Pay attention, 
  • Take on challenging problems, 
  • Do more than the assigned work, and 
  • Persist in face of obstacles.

These skills can actually all be learned. Even though they are more difficult to measure, that doesn't mean we can't improve them, can't practice them, or can't change the way we do our work.

Seth Godin asks us to imagine a team member with all the traditional hard skills: productive, skilled, experienced. That's a fine baseline.

Now add to it. Perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring, and motivated. 

Generous, empathetic, and consistent. A deep listener, with patience.

What happens to your team when someone like that joins?

Let's turn the ship around

Why do we need empowerment?

What must leaders overcome mentally and emotionally to give up control yet retain full responsibility? Do you give employees specific goals as well as the freedom to meet them in any way they choose? Or do people really just want to do as they are told?

Leader-follower

In a leader-follower structure followers take orders and do what they are told to do. They rely on the leader to make all decisions. 

They have limited decision making authority and little incentive to give the utmost of their intellect, energy and passion. 

You must release them instead. Recognize their inherent genius and creativity, and allow those talents to emerge. Let them make meaningful decisions. 

Are you as leader willing to be vulnerable to the effects of their decisions?

Turn disempowered phrases like 

  • "I would like to", 
  • "Could we", 
  • "What should I do about" 

... into empowered phrases like 

  • "We intend to", 
  • "We plan on", 
  • "We will". 

Ask people to state their intentions. Let them make meaningful decisions. Turn passive followers into active leaders.

Rather than giving specific lists of tasks, give broad guidance and context and tell them to prepare the tasks instead. Don't tell people to do stuff they already know they have to do. 

Resist the urge to provide solutions.

When the performance of a unit goes down after leaders leave, it is taken as a sign that they were good leaders, not that they were ineffective in training their people properly.

What comes first, mindset or behavior?

Instead of trying to change mindsets and then change the way you act, start acting differently and the new thinking will follow. You can choose to change your own thinking and hope this leads to new behavior, or change your behavior and hope this leads to new thinking.

Empowerment does not work without competence and clarity. The new decision makers must have a higher level of technical knowledge and clearer sense of organizational purpose than ever before. This is leadership.

When you explain a change, people hear and think they know what you mean, but they don't. They have never had a picture of what you are talking about. They can't see in their imagination how it works. Think out loud. Be honest about what you intend to achieve and communicate that all the time, at every level.

That's how you turn a ship around.

Technical Leadership

How can I be a leader and keep up my technical skills at the same time? 

What can I do to learn leadership? Why do people see me as a leader, when I don't feel that way? If I'm a leader, will I have to boss people around? What is leadership, anyway?

Leadership is the process of creating an environment in which people become empowered. Each person is unique, so we can expect many different leadership styles, and we must be able to switch appropriately from one to another as the situation demands.

The best technical leaders have a problem-solving leadership style. They have one thing in common: A faith that there's always a better way. Their entire orientation is toward creating an environment in which everyone can solve problems, making decisions, and implementing those decisions as required to get the job done.

The most widespread and harmful myth about leadership is that only Leaders can lead, where the capital L indicates that someone has been appointed to the position of Leader. There are, in fact, many more potential leaders than Leaders. You may have no title at all, but be the one who makes your group start to function in new and more effective ways.

People don't become leaders because they never fail. They become leaders because of the way they react to failure.

If you are a leader, the people are your work. In a complex environment, even the most task-oriented leader is forced to put people first, or the task won't get done.

Power is not a possession, but a relationship. You possess expertise. Any power you get from expertise is based on a relationship between you and someone else. 

Your software engineering expertise would contribute no power if you lead a mountain climbing team. If your whole team consists of novice developers, your expertise will give you considerable power. If your team are also experts like you, they will pay more attention to your organizational power.

Easier said than done. Most innovators who move into leadership positions know little or nothing about organizational power. Thus, the new leader needs new powers just when technical power is about to slip away.

If people don't want your help, you will never succeed in helping them, no matter how smart or wonderful you are. Always check whether people want your help. Attempts to help are often interpreted as attempts to interfere. 

Effective help can only start with mutual agreement on a clear definition of the problem.

Not everyone likes being a leader, but many are slow to realize that they don't. By the time they do, they have usually lost the skills or attitudes or illusions that would let them move back to their old status. Think about why you want to be a leader, and all the assets and liabilities you have as a leader.

"Becoming a Technical Leader" by Gerald M. Weinberg