Hey Dan! Wonderful article, two follow-up questions:
1) Are there any books that you'd recommend to get a better handle on strategic work? I've heard Good Strategy/Bad Strategy is pretty solid, are there any other ones you'd recommend?
2) On insight generation, you suggested talking to the customer. But in big organisations, say for Strategy and Operations role at large tech companies, there is less of an opportunity to do that. How would you suggest going around that? Or how do strategy teams at Faire approximate that?
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy is great. I would also read 7 Powers and Understanding Michael Porter.
At Faire, we encourage everyone to talk to customers, and because of the scale of the customer base on both sides of the marketplace relative to team size, its feasible for everyone who wants to to do so. At companies where that is not true, I would encourage folks to listen to customer calls, read CX suggestions and inquiries, join facebook or other customer groups, etc.
I like the qual—>quant—>qual principle as it keeps the focus on user intuition. Often I find there’s a tendency to look at shifts in data first to smoke out opportunities in a more comprehensive before going to qual, which - while possibly resulting in the same answer- could over time yield less optimal outcomes. (“Most business problems are the byproduct of customer problems”)
I enjoyed this article and agree that writing is the best way to synthesize ideas into a coherent story from my own experience.
Do you believe LLMs can play a role in this process, or is it too easy to find yourself outsourcing your thinking and not doing the actual real synthesis work?
It's a great question. In my personal experience LLMs can be helpful as research assistants - finding sources or things to explore. But they are quite bad at actually writing anything you'd want to read.
Wonderful articulation, so perfectly laid out amd thank you for this. Two quick thoughts, does this process work across organizations of all sizes, or is this more appropriate for the startup / scale up like settings. The second piece is around creating consistency for teams executing on these direction iterations, if leaders consistently make changes to the overarching direction based on feedback, it leads to loss of morale within the teams executing said changes, what are you thoughts on striking the right balance here to maintain momentum
Thanks for your helpful response. A follow-up thought though, even on a tactical execution level / strategy constant change in goal posts or directions adds to tech debt, a long list of tasks that fall to the bottom of the chart since the new direction requires a rebuild / tech debt, abrupt start-stops to projects and loss moral due to general sense of lack of achievements. What in your experience has worked well to keep downstream teams motivated and not feel like clockwork constantly churning outputs that don't see the light of the day.
Yeah it's a good point. I think it mostly comes down to giving teams a goal and a metric / optimization function, but letting them drive the iteration toward hitting it, even if it takes them pretty far off the originally expected course
Great write up, Dan. Among many things, you are reminding me of a debate I have had with friends many times before. The value of STEM education vs. humanities education. The real answer is that they are both important, but an emphasis on STEM sometimes leads to dismissal of the humanities. The humanities however, are one fantastic way to learn and develop the 4 skillsets you discussed.
Hey Dan! Wonderful article, two follow-up questions:
1) Are there any books that you'd recommend to get a better handle on strategic work? I've heard Good Strategy/Bad Strategy is pretty solid, are there any other ones you'd recommend?
2) On insight generation, you suggested talking to the customer. But in big organisations, say for Strategy and Operations role at large tech companies, there is less of an opportunity to do that. How would you suggest going around that? Or how do strategy teams at Faire approximate that?
Thank you!
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy is great. I would also read 7 Powers and Understanding Michael Porter.
At Faire, we encourage everyone to talk to customers, and because of the scale of the customer base on both sides of the marketplace relative to team size, its feasible for everyone who wants to to do so. At companies where that is not true, I would encourage folks to listen to customer calls, read CX suggestions and inquiries, join facebook or other customer groups, etc.
I like the qual—>quant—>qual principle as it keeps the focus on user intuition. Often I find there’s a tendency to look at shifts in data first to smoke out opportunities in a more comprehensive before going to qual, which - while possibly resulting in the same answer- could over time yield less optimal outcomes. (“Most business problems are the byproduct of customer problems”)
Agree, I find it is usually more effective to start with customers, unless the customer need is very well understood
I enjoyed this article and agree that writing is the best way to synthesize ideas into a coherent story from my own experience.
Do you believe LLMs can play a role in this process, or is it too easy to find yourself outsourcing your thinking and not doing the actual real synthesis work?
It's a great question. In my personal experience LLMs can be helpful as research assistants - finding sources or things to explore. But they are quite bad at actually writing anything you'd want to read.
Wonderful articulation, so perfectly laid out amd thank you for this. Two quick thoughts, does this process work across organizations of all sizes, or is this more appropriate for the startup / scale up like settings. The second piece is around creating consistency for teams executing on these direction iterations, if leaders consistently make changes to the overarching direction based on feedback, it leads to loss of morale within the teams executing said changes, what are you thoughts on striking the right balance here to maintain momentum
1. I think it works better at startups, but mostly because they are able to move faster. Big companies should aspire to operate like this as well.
2. You absolutely need an overarching mission and vision that does not change. Strategy to me is more about how you achieve it, which should change.
Thanks for your helpful response. A follow-up thought though, even on a tactical execution level / strategy constant change in goal posts or directions adds to tech debt, a long list of tasks that fall to the bottom of the chart since the new direction requires a rebuild / tech debt, abrupt start-stops to projects and loss moral due to general sense of lack of achievements. What in your experience has worked well to keep downstream teams motivated and not feel like clockwork constantly churning outputs that don't see the light of the day.
Yeah it's a good point. I think it mostly comes down to giving teams a goal and a metric / optimization function, but letting them drive the iteration toward hitting it, even if it takes them pretty far off the originally expected course
So strategy is fundamentally a continues experimentation exercise
It's not only that, but its more about iteration than most people think
Hey Dan, thank you for this great article!
On learning to talk to customers, are there any resources you recommend to explore to develop/sharp those skills?
Great write up, Dan. Among many things, you are reminding me of a debate I have had with friends many times before. The value of STEM education vs. humanities education. The real answer is that they are both important, but an emphasis on STEM sometimes leads to dismissal of the humanities. The humanities however, are one fantastic way to learn and develop the 4 skillsets you discussed.
Strategic excellence isn’t about predicting the future; it’s about constantly refining your approach based on what’s happening now.
exactly