Building A Better Strategy

The end of a year is a great time to think about what’s coming next. It’s a great time to do planning. It’s a great time to build a strategy.

John Braddock

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Jan 8, 2020

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But most people don’t. Most people don’t use the end of the year for adjusting their strategy. Instead, they adjust their tactics.

They’ll sign up for a gym membership. Or a writing course. Or resolve to do one or two things better.

But tactics flow from strategies. If you don’t have the right strategy, tactics don’t matter.

In this article, I’m going to give you some questions to ask about your strategy. They’re simple questions, but very important. Because if you don’t ask the right questions, the right answers are impossible.

First, we start with your Endgame.

An Endgame is a Positive-Sum Game. It’s cooperative game. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

- What do you want your Endgame this year to look like?

Maybe your Endgame this year is to be a corporate executive in a Fortune 500 company.

Maybe your Endgame this year is to be a widely-read author.

Maybe your Endgame this year is to become governor of a state.

Maybe your Endgame this year is living quietly with your spouse and children on a farm.

Each of those Endgames has different People, Places and Things inside it.

Which means the questions to ask about your Endgame are:

- Who do I want to be in my Endgame?
- Where do I want my Endgame to be?
- What things do I need to make my Endgame thrive and grow?

Once you’ve answered those questions, you look for your competition. You look for who or what will compete against you for the People, Places and Things in your Endgame.

If your Endgame is to be an executive, your competition will be all the other people who want that position.

If your Endgame is to become a widely-read author, your competition will be all the other things your audience can do instead of reading your book.

If your Endgame is to become governor, your competition will be all the other people who want that position.

If your Endgame is to live quietly on a farm with your family, there’s probably less competition from people. But you’ll still need to compete for the resources to buy the farm, keep it up and sustain your family there.

Here are the questions to ask about your Zero-Sum Game competition:

- Who am I competing against?
- Where will the competition take place?
- How do I win as quickly and efficiently as possible?

The answer to the last question is usually to build an alliance. To join a team. To put a group together that will help you win.

But not always. Sometimes, the answer is for you personally to gain new skills or learn something new or put in time practicing (like writing an hour a day for a year). But even then, you’ll probably want to team up with a mentor or others who can help you build those skills faster. Which means another Positive-Sum Game.

The framework of your strategy looks like this (from A Spy’s Guide To Strategy):

To build your alliance, there is only one key question:

- Who can I work with to help me win the competition that will get me what I need for my Endgame?

Use the end of the year to think about your alliances.

A lot of our alliances happen by accident. Or because of proximity. They happen because the other person is a neighbor or sits in the cubicle next to ours.

But a big part of being strategic is being Endgame-oriented with our alliances.

Here are some questions to think about as you build a strategy this year:

- Who are you teamed up with?
- Is anyone on your team dragging you down?
- Are you networking to see if there others out there who would be better teammates?

I’ll be talking more about those questions in emails and on podcasts this year.

P.S. To know more about Positive-Sum and Zero-Sum Games in building strategies, read A Spy’s Guide To Strategy, available here.