Becoming A Strategist - A Primer

Discover how strategy transcends current resources to achieve unlikely goals, using the die is cast, Julius Caesar, and David and Goliath as practical examples.

The lecture explains that a strategist charts a path to profit, growth, and survival by building a strong, sustainable position that protects a business from environmental changes and competition.

Explore how a strategist uses three core skills to turn around a city by applying the broken window theory and employing data-driven compstat to curb drugs, guns, and prior convictions.

Apply mental models like the broken window theory, identify key levers such as major versus minor crimes and guns, and build strategic anticipation with absorptive capacity.

Explore how Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor built an iconic, diversified business from a small deli, balancing high employee pay and high prices to achieve multi-million revenue.

Learn how Zingerman's Deli demonstrates a sustainable strategy built from four reinforcing choices—goals, where to compete, how to compete, and capabilities—to create long-term competitive advantage.

Discover how Nintendo redefined where to compete and how to win by targeting non-gamers and families with a consumer-centered, profitable innovation strategy.

Apple redefined competition by choosing where to play and how to win, creating a unique, intuitive product. It built an integrated ecosystem and lifestyle marketing through Apple stores.

Discover how to make your goals powerful by choosing the right ones and cultivating an unwavering desire to achieve, like needing to breathe.

Understand organizational capabilities as distributed skills that enable reliable, predictable delivery of goals, from Wal-Mart logistics to Starbucks consistency, driving strategy execution and often building on existing capabilities.

Develop strategic thinking by cutting through clutter to see the issue clearly and identify the highest leverage opportunities, while noting how natural thinking methods can hinder it.

Examine how major brands like Coke and Pepsi, and tech giants like GE and HP, made decision blunders that reshaped markets, showing how changing the game and branding impact outcomes.

Analyze why brilliant people make decision blunders, from information overload and uncertainty to group think, contrasted with hunter-gatherer reasoning versus big data, regression, and game modeling.

Explore how behavioral decision theory reveals cognitive biases that shape our thinking, such as confirmation bias, availability, and anchoring, with management examples and practical implications.

Explore how pattern matching biases us, relying on stereotypes over data, and how evolution shapes our thinking to heighten big decision risks in management.

Explore how uncertainty in probabilistic reasoning leads to bias and irrational choices, as people misjudge outcomes despite equal expected value.

Develop strategic thinking by avoiding the deep dive approach, practicing deliberate decision making, and applying key tools and techniques introduced in this primer.

Identify how companies and managers regularly make major decision mistakes, recognize how decision types and styles can keep us from being strategic, and preview tools and methods to overcome them.

Identify the core issue that holds the key to turning around a situation. Reframe the problem to stop solving the wrong problem and avoid the wrong rabbit hole.

Reflecting on case studies reveals how organizations chase the wrong problem despite big tech bets and provides a method to identify the real issue amid competing narratives in new situations.

Identify the core issue that matters most, apply a four-step method with reverse why to uncover the key goal, perspective, and barriers, and reframe the problem for strategic action.

Explore how different thinking styles solve everyday business problems, from analytical listing to artistic and insight-based approaches, and learn which style you tend to use.

Explore a method for strategic thinking that attacks problems without solving them first, avoiding overwhelm and bias by conceptually breaking down issues and identifying the most powerful levers.

Apply strategic thinking to retirement planning by increasing savings, achieving higher returns, and reducing fees, while exploring ways to boost income and manage expenses and taxes.

Learn strategic thinking by identifying the biggest lever in issues, using a real life example to show how focusing on new business development relates to pricing, capacity, and product mix.

Wrap up the introductory program in becoming a strategist, emphasizing techniques and ongoing practice today. Explore weekly resources on strategy and business leadership via the instructor's website and related programs.