Strategy

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson

Ask any business owner what type of business they are in and they'll tell you where they're located, what product they produce or service they provide, and even what  their ultimate mission is. But rarely will they articulate their strategy for achieving their goals. 

In other words, they'll tell you the 'what', maybe the 'why', but rarely the 'how.'

Strategy is the 'how' of a business - everything else is the 'what' or the 'why.'

But how do you know if your 'how' is good enough to achieve your 'what' and your 'why'?

As Jerry Neumann points out in his piece 'Strategy Under Uncertainty', any strategy for a business requires deep reflection about possible inputs (actions) and desired outputs (results). We believe the desired result of a comprehensive strategy should be to improve your company's competitive position within the industry. If executed in a sustainable manner, this tends to show up in the financials over time.

Broken down at a more granular level, for a strategy to be comprehensive, it must answer three main questions:

1. How does your company's relative negotiating ability stack up within the industry landscape (against established competitors, new startups, suppliers, customers)? 

2. What is your organization's competitive advantage over other firms?

3. On what dimension(s) do you compete to keep or expand this competitive advantage (on price, quality, or speed)?

The strategic process doesn't stop here however. It isn't good enough to merely answer these questions. They must lead to results.

Ray Dalio made famous the simple equation of 'Pain+Reflection=Progress' in his book Principles and we believe this applies perfectly to strategic decision-making as well. Strategize, Act, Reflect, Adapt, Repeat. 

As you implement your business's strategy, it is important to measure and maintain a commitment to your desired results - the 'what' and the 'why' - and consider whether to adapt your strategy if the goals aren't being met. A business strategy is only as productive as its execution allows, and business leaders are only as successful as the strategies they employ. Focus on the 'How' to achieve your 'What' and your 'Why.'

Inside the flour company supplying America's sudden baking obsession (Marker Media)

+ "Ely and her colleagues didn’t know it, but across Carbohydrate Camelot — the name that employees gave the 14-acre headquarters campus in Norwich, Vermont, that contains a restored farmhouse and a handful of small buildings — co-CEO Karen Colberg was staring in shock at the recent daily sales figures that had just popped up on her screen. “I fired off a text to the sales team to check their figures,” says Colberg. “It was obviously some sort of mistake.” No mistake, came the reply. The figures had already been double-checked. They showed a 600% increase in grocery-store sales almost literally overnight."

Sales advice - 7 crucial points (Y Combinator Forum)

+ "Sales is about people and it's about problem solving. It is not about solutions or technology or chemicals or lines of code or artichokes. It's about people and it's about solving problems."

Its time to build for good (Palladium Magazine)

+ "Offshoring is a choice that can be made quite quickly; it’s not clear that the same is true for onshoring. This is a devilish epistemic obstacle to confront. If we were discussing a country in, say, West Africa, we might call it a problem of economic development. In fact, it might not even make much sense to make a distinction between pre-industrial and post-industrial societies—such as ours—in this respect. Both often must start from epistemic and institutional scratch. This is the uglier, more uncomfortable side of our present condition: our crisis extends beyond will. We also have a crisis of capability."

Permanent Equity's Open Data Recovery Resources (Permanent Equity)

+ This is our attempt to aggregate recovery data related to COVID-19 across industries including retail, ecommerce, restaurants, transportation, agriculture, travel, construction, and more.

Foursquare's recovery index (Foursquare)

+ "As COVID-19 stay-at-home orders begin to lift, shifting real world behavior will be a critical indicator of economic recovery. How people start returning to different places - and in what order, at what pace - will be necessary information for governments, journalists, researchers and brands alike in navigating the times ahead. Foursquare location data reliably and accurately reveals these changes in visitation in near real-time, helping you understand and plan for the recovery process."

The opportunity and risks for consumer startups in a social distancing world — a framework for consumer attention (Sarah Tavel)

+ "I imagine consumers as dividing their attention in a given day across three different types of “events” or modes: Events that span bigger blocks of contiguous time (“Rocks”), micro events that take advantage of attention gaps between or during those blocks (“Sand”), and things that can overlay over the other two (“Water”). Each day, we fill our cup of 24 hours with some combination of the three (+the rare air bubbles), constantly allocating that time across and between our options to maximize our dopamine/serotonin/etc while at the same time fulfill our responsibilities to work, family, and health."

Nexar's Mobility Report (Nexar)

+ "In recent weeks, we’ve observed material changes in US driver activity on a city- and state-level as social distancing guidelines are increasingly relaxed. These mobility trends help us understand key facets of regional economic recovery. When coupled with real-time, ground-level imagery, analysts and governments can make informed, high-conviction decisions about anything from public health initiatives to investment allocation."

Post-COVID recovery indicators (Samir Madani)

+ This is a Twitter thread of the best post-COVID demand recovery indicators.

Why remote work is so hard—and how it can be fixed (Cal Newport)

+ "In theory, we have the technology we need to make remote work workable. And yet most companies that have tried to graft it onto their existing setups have found only mixed success. In response, many have stuck with what they know. Now the coronavirus pandemic has changed the equation. Whole workplaces have gone remote; steam engines have been outlawed. The question is whether, having been forced to embrace this new technology, we can solve the long-standing problems that have thwarted its adoption in the past."

Hit the emotional gym — the founder's framework for emotional fitness (First Round Review)

+ "Studies show that 72% of entrepreneurs have mental health concerns — but I very much doubt that a similar proportion of founders are currently in therapy. And far too often we see the consequences of a failure to do that work when startups implode, whether it’s due to a toxic work culture, co-founder conflict, or deep-seated leadership challenges.”"

Antilia: the tallest single family house in the world (Wikipedia)

+ Could you imagine what it would be like to live in a 27-story house? Just ask Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man.

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