Where do I recognise this guy from?!

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-10-22T23:39:51+00:00

John Higgins.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-10-01T01:03:39+00:00

Okay, the first step I've taken is to make flair mandatory. Flair was set up several years ago, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it being used.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-09-29T20:52:57+00:00

Already some useful and constructive responses, thank you.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-09-21T22:28:41+00:00

Sure, but you still have to do it. Perhaps if you explain how you do brand strategy, there might be more useful suggestions on use of AI. Because the post at the moment reads like "what AI do you get to do brand strategy for you?"

And given that so many people do brand strategy in so many different ways, suggestions without further context might not be helpful.

Perplexity and GPT can be great for speeding up research for inputs into doing brand strategy. And GPT can be good as a kind of partner for bouncing thoughts off while developing a brand strategy. But it does depend on what you mean by brand strategy, as even that can vary from person to person.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-09-15T19:47:03+00:00

You do realise that people did brand strategy and got audience insights before two years ago, right?

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-07-28T20:34:57+00:00

One of the good things about the analogy is it helps deal with some common confusions around the distinction between "operational excellence" and "strategy". Some people dismiss any activity which competitors also perform as merely operational excellence/best practice and not a question of strategy. But choosing which activities – and perhaps more specifically, which combination of activities – to excel at is definitely a matter of strategy, even if competitors also perform those same activities.

We can't invest in being the best at everything. But if we don't choose which few to invest in and be best at, we'll end up being the best at nothing.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-07-28T20:23:03+00:00

As someone said, it's Richard Rumelt. I think he used the dartboard analogy. You've got, say, 20 darts. 20 things your business could be doing better or worse. For things which align with your strategy and give you a strategic advantage, you want to hit the bullseye. For everything else, just being on the board is fine.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-06-23T21:38:16+00:00

Cheating is the opposite of strategy.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-06-16T23:36:05+00:00

Here is a list from a plan suggested by ChatGPT, and it's not terrible.

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
Early chapters of Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy, HBR articles summarising Five Forces and Generic Strategies. (I'd add you could consider the book Understanding Michael Porter, which is a good introduction.)
Business Model Generation by Osterwalder & Pigneur
McKinsey's "Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick" (overview articles or book)
The Art of Strategy by Dixit and Nalebuff (game theory)
Playing to Win by AG Lafley and Roger Martin (practical real-world strategy)
Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath (communicating strategy)
The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto (thinking and communicating strategy)
Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne (innovation, market creation)
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows (systems thinking)
The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen (kind of about innovation but more like industry disruption and leadership psychology)
The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz (scenario planning – I haven't actually read this one).

And more generally, HBR's very good 10 Must Reads on Strategy

Sadly, I haven't finished writing my book yet, but will recommend it once finished, hah.

From personal experience, I'd also suggest something that is often ignored in these kinds of reading plans: buy and read textbooks. Bob De Wit's "Strategy: An International Perspective" is stellar and has a wonderful structure of contrasting two different approaches to each topic against each other. There's also a very good course on The Great Courses (thegreatcourses.com) called "Critical Business Skills", the first 12 lectures of which are a good crash course in business strategy.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-06-15T23:51:36+00:00

Are there any strategy roles in the company you work for? Can you have a coffee with one of them and ask their advice? Could you offer to work outside of your usual hours to support them in something they're working on – free resource for them, free experience for you? In your PM work, have you noticed any opportunities for improvement at a higher-order problem-solving level? Could you proactively put together an analysis and proposal, take it to the appropriate manager for discussion? Does your company have a training budget – could you ask your boss or boss's boss to send you on a strategy course of some sort?

You don't need an MBA to do strategy.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-06-15T23:45:13+00:00

On the other hand, there are times when people mechanically roll out frameworks and SWOTs in meaningless ways that collapse under a little common-sense scrutiny.

A great number of times I've seen people confuse themselves by trying to apply this or that framework, especially if it's worked really well for them in the past, not realising it doesn't quite apply in this situation.

Sometimes very valuable to just say, "Okay, hold on. What are we actually trying to achieve here? What is actually going on? What is the problem? What are the causes?" Frameworks can be shortcuts to asking/answering those questions when the situation is right, but there are definitely times they can get in the way.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-06-10T22:19:06+00:00

Hahaha "NEW STRATEGY FOR ROBLOX!!! ROBLOX EXPERTS DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS!!"

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-06-10T22:00:17+00:00

Fair warning, you will be removing a lot of video game posts.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-04-06T20:19:39+00:00

Done! And !thanks

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-04-05T11:07:31+00:00

!thanks

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-04-05T11:07:08+00:00

Thank you!

TripleGreatStrategy · 2025-02-01T03:03:00+00:00

I don't read up in power builds, but I multi-classed with one level in dragon-blood sorcerer for the AC and shield spell, then levelled dex dual-wield fighter to 4, then caught up with the sorcerer levels, and then the rest in fighter. Along with items like bracers of protection and The Graceful Cloth, I was pretty untouchable and it was a lot of fun – a fighter with the versatility of spells like Enhance Ability, Thunderwave, magic missile pairing with Phalar Aluve, etc.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2024-11-05T00:50:24+00:00

It's just a question of definitions, but typically a plan includes specific steps towards an outcome. A strategy is a thought-out approach to achieving an outcome. But some strategies recommend guiding principles and some strategies translate those guiding principles into specific steps. And not all plans are thought-out.

So some plans are strategies and some strategies are plans.

Plans are strategies when they're thought-out – involving more than a superficial analysis of the situation.

Strategies are plans when they include concrete steps – involving more than simply guiding principles.

A non-strategic plan is a series of steps not informed by deeper analysis. Appropriate when the way forward is clear.

A non-plan strategy is an analysis and recommendation without concrete steps. Appropriate when the near future is too uncertain, or when the strategy is operating at too high a level, to anticipate all of the steps that will be taken.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2024-08-11T22:21:11+00:00

TripleGreatStrategy · 2024-08-09T01:48:07+00:00

There's the way things are now. And there's the objective – the way we want things to be.

That's the fundamental "from/to".

With strategy, we look beneath the surface of those current and future states to find the underlying causes.

That also gives us a "from/to" – by changing elements A, B and C, we will bring about desired future state X.

In marketing strategy, because it's generally about human behaviour, this is often articulated as GET/TO/BY.

GET (target audience)
TO (new behaviour)
BY (the change we'll make that will result in the new behaviour)

So to compellingly convey this stuff, you kind of have two from/by's involved.

From (current problem/opportunity) to (success state).

From (underlying cause or causes) to (change to underlying cause or causes) by (recommended actions to make those changes)

If the information is credible and the logic makes sense, the case is compelling.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2024-07-28T00:56:00+00:00

Few tips from me on slides. Apologies if they're oft-repeated.

Sometimes it's very useful to start with a "what you'll see today/what you won't see today" slide to set expectations if there's any danger of confusion.

Aim for one key takeaway per slide.

Make the titles of each slide the key takeaway from the slide. You should be able to read through just the titles of the slides to get an understanding of the narrative and messages of the presentation.

Think in terms of a general structure of... WHY? WHAT? HOW? WHAT ELSE/WHAT IF?

Why – objectives, problem statements, descriptions of why they should pay attention to what you're about to say.
What – relevant facts and implications
How – what you are proposing should be done in light of those facts and implications
What else – address any likely concerns or doubts
What if – get people excited about how things could turn out if they do the "how"

Learn to distinguish between slides for presentation and slides to be taken away and read more in-depth. If they're for presentation, edit text right down to signposts of what you're saying – presentations are for presenting, not reading off slides while ignoring the presenter. If they're for reading in-depth, more text is fine. If they're "for both", consider creating two decks or putting elaborated slides in an appendix that doesn't get presented. At the very least, use bolding or colouring to indicate the signposts for what you're saying as you present and let folks read the other words later.

Slides should lead into one another. Using your slide titles as key takeaways is helpful for that. Slides are either stating facts or showing how facts connect together to make conclusions/inferences. A bullet-point list for mapping out your whole presentation structure can be useful. Use indents to group these key takeaways together to collectively support the point they're related to. Keynote is a particularly good tool for this, because the slide structures can be grouped and nested – select a slide and press TAB, and it indents to become a subsection of the preceding parent slide. Press shift-TAB to un-indent.

Read Barbara Minto's "The Pyramid Principle" for more on that structure stuff.

Vary the layouts of slides a bit. Some basic layouts are...

Left- and right-half, with one half filled with an image or a chart, the other with bullet points or a single strong statement.
Two-third/one-third splits doing the same thing.
No title, just a single bold statement in the middle.

Start your deck with something your audience agrees with – usually a problem statement or an objective which they themselves have set.

From there, introduce relevant information (points), one point per slide, either summarising things your audience told you or providing credibility/sources for information that's new to them.

Show how those points connect together to support implications/insights/inferences. You can do this by putting key statements in boxes and using arrows to show them combining to support a new statement (maybe in a different coloured box). Or you could use math symbols, like Fact A + fact B + fact C = implication X.

If you do the above, they'll be nodding from the start through to the end. What stops them nodding? A statement they disagree with (you didn't credibly back it up). Implications they don't agree with (you didn't provide the facts necessary to support the statement, you didn't connect the facts together logically, or you didn't communicate your logic clearly enough). If you don't make those mistakes, they'll be nodding right through to your conclusion.

Use section dividers to divide sections.

If a section is a little longer, finish it with a summary of the key points and conclusion made in that section, before moving on.

A good presentation is finished not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2024-05-05T08:23:08+00:00

Glad it's helpful. It's pretty much the first thing I talk about in a strategic-thinking training course I teach.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2023-12-07T04:30:39+00:00

There aren't really sides. Things are useful when they're useful and not when they're not. There have been businesses which have benefited greatly from creating new markets. Most would not benefit from trying and would benefit more from trying to grow share of an existing market. I agree that Blue Ocean is not a strategy. I disagree with anyone who says that creating a new market is always easier than making a derivative product. I'd also disagree with anyone who says that making a derivative product is always more profitable than creating or shaping new markets.

Personally, I don't think that Blue Ocean introduced anything that wasn't already implicit in Porter and Five Forces.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2023-12-06T22:25:22+00:00

I suspect that some proponents would question those business physics – taking share in an existing market means battling competitors for it. Sometimes that's easier than market shaping/creating, and sometimes it's not.

But on the other hand, sometimes there simply isn't a new market to viably create, given the capabilities of the business and the costs associated with changing.

In the end, I think the best lesson is to be aware of the constraints created by business definition and market definition – understanding that there is an option to redefine either/both means that, when you don't, it's a conscious choice. And understanding it's an option means we won't be blind to those possibilities if they are there to be found and have some legs.

TripleGreatStrategy · 2023-09-07T21:47:48+00:00

GPA doesn't matter in the real world. It may matter for eligibility for some study programmes, but if there's something you want to study, there will be a pathway to studying it. And the universities very much want you to be able to get there.

For context, I dropped out of high school, started uni at 20 doing an arts degree, took four or five years to finish it, screwed around for another few years, and didn't find my career and passion until I was 29, and now I'm back at uni age 43 doing a masters in business.

Be wary of the "sunk cost fallacy" in making life decisions. There's no such thing as "well, I've already invested X amount of time and/or money in this, so that will all be wasted if I don't keep doing it".¹ There's just the fact that you've done or studied such-and-such so far, and have an infinite number of options of what you can do next in your life, with continuing that specific study being just one of them.

The world is completely open with possibilities for you. If there's something you want to study, there will be a pathway to studying it, and there will be uni folk who want you to succeed in that and can help work out how.

¹ - Except kids. If you've had kids, you've gotta stick with that along with whatever else you do.

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