I finished this book in March 2025. I recommend this book 7/10.
Why you should read this book:
This book provides six ways to think strategically but also dives into who to include on the journey and how to share your vision.
Get your copy here.
🚀 The book in three sentences
Tools for strategic thinking and aligning others (no SWOT)
Framing the problem and using matrix and scoring systems
Be a Corporate Diplomat who understands how to be politically savvy.
📝 My notes and thoughts
P12. Business leaders who understand and manage their own emotions and those of others, think creatively and generate new ideas, and communicate and work effectively with others are likely to be more effective strategic thinkers. Regardless of your endowment, the right experiences and training can help you develop that potential. It's like deciding to become a marathon runner. Your genetics—having a higher percentage of slow-twitch muscle fibers and great lung capacity—may make it easier to become a strong marathon runner. But if you don't run—a lot— and discipline yourself to practice using the proper techniques, you will likely lose out to people with less inherent potential but great discipline.
P31. You cannot hope to develop superior pattern recognition in every business domain. You must immerse yourself deeply in selected areas—for example, business functions such as marketing, industries like fast-moving consumer goods, or stakeholder environments such as government relations. The implication: you need to put a lot of thought into selecting the domains in which you aspire to become a strategic thinker. Only then can you get the necessary immersion and training to become great at pattern recognition. Another way to develop your pattern recognition ability is to work closely with "experts" in apprentice-like relationships. Find opportunities where you can observe and learn from the work of people who are great at pattern recognition and so absorb their ways of thinking. This requires more than observation, as you want to learn as much as possible about the internal thought processes of the expert. Of course, this means they must be willing to devote some time to discussing their thought process with you. Helpful questions to ask include:
What were the most important patterns or signals you perceived?
What connections did you make to previous situations or events you have experienced?
What, if anything, was novel about the situation or problem?
How confident are you in your conclusions?
To what extent will you continue to refine your thinking and adjust your approach?
P35. Pattern recognition checklist:
What are the most important domains in which you need to develop your pattern-recognition abilities?
How can you best immerse yourself in those domains to enhance your mental models?
What practices can you use to develop your pattern-recognition abilities, such as learning from simulations, working with experts, or getting feedback?
What can you do to cultivate your curiosity and get more in tune with emerging trends?
How should you develop your awareness of your potential vulnerabilities to cognitive biases?
What processes can you implement to help debias yourself and strengthen your critical-thinking ability?
P43. An adaptation of Galbraith's Star Model.
P56. The four interconnected subsystems of system analysis.
P61. System Analysis Checklist:
Are there domains in your business that are complex and challenging to understand, and if so, would it help to model them as systems?
Does thinking about your organization as a system help you to understand essential dynamics, diagnose problems, and drive change?
As you think about the systems you're dealing with, what are the key leverage points, limiting factors and feedback loops?
Can you leverage systems analysis to make your organization more adaptive?
How can you enhance your ability to apply systems analysis in your organization?
P65. You need to know when to be in the clouds and when to be on the ground. Too much time on the ground, and get bogged down in minutiae. But if you're up in the clouds when you should be on the ground, you don't have the insight into the organization you need to inform the strategy. So, you must figure out the right altitude at which to fly.
P74. You can apply this sort of backward induction/era planning logic to developing the strategy for your business. You do this by:
Establishing your planning horizon.
Looking ahead to "what will be true" and " what will be possible."
Reasoning backward to what you need to do in the shorter term to lay the foundation for achieving those goals.
P79. Mental agility checklist:
When is it most important for you to look at your organization's challenges and opportunities from multiple perspectives or levels of analysis?
Do you know any leaders who are great at level-shifting? What can you learn from them?
What exercises can you do to build up your level-shifting abilities?
What are the most important games your organization needs to play to create value and capture value?
How might game theory concepts such as first-mover advantage, signaling, equilibrium, sequencing, and backward induction help you to develop better strategies?
What is your plan for becoming better at game-playing, such as by hosting scenario-planning exercises?
P90. ASCI matrix.
P91. Framing problems means:
Defining the problem in the form of a question that needs to be answered.
Clarifying the criteria that will be used to evaluate the fitness of potential solutions.
Identifying the most significant potential barriers that must be overcome to succeed.
P92. "Hero's Journey" (think Luke Skywalker in Star Wars). They encourage leaders to frame problems in terms of a hero who embarks on a quest seeking a treasure during which they must defeat one or more dragons. Who or what are the hero, the quest, the treasure, and the dragons?
The hero, of course, is you, the leader, framing and solving a significant organizational problem.
The quest is the reason you need to go on the journey, in the form of a question that clearly defines the problem.
The treasure is the best possible solution, and the benefits of realizing it.
The dragons are the potential barriers you must confront and surmount along the road.
P98. "Scoring a deal," a Columbia Business School case study about complex negotiations, you can do this by (Picture on P100.):
Defining the dimensions on which you will assess the options (already done as part of framing the problem).
For each dimension, rank your options from worst to best.
For each dimensionm creating a scale from 0 to 100 (100 being the most effective), then placing your options on the scale.
Assigning "weights" to the dimensions in terms of their relative importance to your strategy—the weights should total one (if you have four dimensions, for example, you could assign weights of 0.3, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.1).
Calculate the total value for each option by multiplying its score on each dimension by the weight given to the dimension, and then add up the results.
P106. As Peter M. Senge puts it, "Vision is different from purpose. Purpose is a general heading. Vision is a specific destination, a picture of a desired future. Purpose is 'advancing man's capability to explore the heavens.' Visions is a man on the moon by the end of 1960s."
P114. As the American psychologist Howard Gardner states in Leading Minds, "Leaders achieve their effectiveness chiefly through the stories they relate...In addition to communicating stories, leaders embody those stories...[and] convey their stories by the kinds of lives they, themselves, lead." Consider this vision statement for an eye care business: Vision for lift. It evokes how eyesight develops and changes over a lifetime and helps connect the organization more closely to the experience of its patients. Telling stories is one important way that leaders influence and inspire. Stories help create a sense of connection and build familiarity and trust in ways that data points cannot. Stories also stick in our minds. We can recall information in stories more accurately and for far longer than information gleaned from facts and figures. As Kendall Haven, author of Story Proof and Story Smart, notes, "Your goal in every communication is to influence your target audience (change their current attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and behavior). Information alone rarely changes any of these. Research confirms that well-designed stories are the most effective vehicle for influencing.
P115. Leaders can deliver key insights using five classic story archetypes. These are love (say the company has fallen in love with its product or service and wants to share its passion), redemption (say the business has fallen on hard times and seek to recover), rags to riches ( the company is an underdog looking to overcome adversity), stranger in a strange land (you could be launching a new product or service) and the holy grail ( you have ambitious goal to discover deep fulfilling).
P124. In seeking to influence the rules of the game, it's helpful to imagine you are a corporate diplomat. International diplomats seek to protect and advance the interests of their nations by fostering relationships, building alliances, and negotiating agreements. As a corporate diplomat, you must learn to do the same to protect and promote the interest of your business.
P135. How to listen actively:
Be Present:
Give them your complete attention.
Focus your complete attention only on the other person; turn away from your computer and ignore your phone.
Make direct eye contact.
Avoid looking around at other people or things.
Paraphrase what you heard, using your own words, for example, "What I heard is ..."
If needed, clarify your understanding of what was said, for example, "If I understand you correctly, you are saying ..."
Encourage:
Encourage the person to tell you what is on his/her mind.
Verbally acknowledge with minimal interruptions: "Uh huh," "Mmm," or "Yes."
Nod your head to indicate you are listening.
Lean towards the person.
Listen without interrupting, suspend your judgment, and don't impose your solutions.
Acknowledge and empathize with the person's feelings, for example, "You seem to be feeling ..."
Question
Learn from the conversation instead of confirming your existing beliefs.
Pose questions that require a reflective; avoid questions that require a yes/no answer.
Use "Tell me more about that" to elicit more detail.
Use "Why do you think that is the case?" to probe understanding of causes and effects.
Use "What would happen if ...?" and "What would happen then?" to expand thinking about consequences.
Summarize
Summarize what you heard and what agreements you have made.
Begin with a concluding statement, "To summarize our discussion ..."
Including the most important facts, information, and agreements made during the conversation.
Check that the other person has the same understanding as you do. "So, does that sound OK you?"
Thank the other person for the conversation.
P144. Political Savvy Checklist:
What are the most important alliances you need to build—both within your organization and externally—to advance your agenda.
What agendas are the most influential players pursuing? Where might their agenda align with yours, and where might it conflict?
How does influence work in the organization? Who defers to whom on key issues of concern?
What are the motivations of pivotal people, the situational pressures driving them, and their perceptions of their choices?
What are the elements of an effective influence strategy? How should you frame your arguments? Might influence tools such as entanglement, sequencing, and action-forcing events help?
P148. Many leaders struggle with this because they don't get opportunities to demonstrate strategic thinking skills. To increase your visibility, you should do the following, regardless of what role you are in.
Show you see the big picture: Help others see that you have a deep understanding of your organization's context and challenges. Take advantage of opportunities to link discussions of current issues to the bigger picture.
Demonstrate you are a critical thinker: Strive to always ground your arguments in solid analysis and show how you reached your conclusions. In both written and verbal modes, seek to communicate concisely and logically.
Have a point of view: Before every interaction where strategic issues could be discussed, take the time to review the key topics and analyses. Think about the specific insights you could contribute or questions you could ask.
Highlight your ability to observe trends and envision potential futures: Help others see that you are tuned in to relevant trends. Show that you can look beyond the now to foresee how the future could unfold.
Speak like a strategic thinker: Use words and phrases that highlight your strategic-thinking ability, such as "strategic goals," "root causes," and "competitive responses."
Engage in constructive challenge: Ask the hard questions without being disruptive or disrespectful. Show that you don't take things at face value and can think a few "moves" out to probe how things are likely to evolve.
Don't rehash problems; reframe them: Identify new ways to define the problem and potential solutions. Be alert to opportunities to demonstrate you have the mental flexibility to see things from multiple perspectives.
P150. To develop your pattern-recognition abilities, focus on doing the following:
Learning about the underlying mechanisms: Knowing the underlying principles and mechanisms of human pattern recognition can hekp you understand how your brain process and recognizes patterns. It will provide you with strategies for improving your pattern-recognition skills.
Immersing yourself: Your pattern-recognition ability will improve if you devote yourself to learning about specific domains of interest. Try to discern the key variables that drive change and recognize trends in those domains. Cultivate your curiosity about why things work the way they do.
Engaging with experts: Seek out people who already deeply understand domains of interest to you. Ask them to help you understand how they separate signal from noise and identify the most important patterns.