The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists

The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors. A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.

Thinking strategically starts with reflection on the deepest nature of an undertaking and on the central challenges it poses. It develops with understanding of focus and timing. Focus means knowing where to place one’s attention. What is truly essential? What is secondary? What cannot be ignored without risking the success of the enterprise?

For any business person, "Me too' won't do" feels right intuitively. Action, creation, risk-these lie at the root of invention. Business value does not start with bloodless analytics. Passion, monomania and domain mastery fuel invention and so are central. The compelling continuing contribution of founders demonstrates this. Planning rare

But good strategy looks past these issues to what is fundamental. From that perspective, the threats to the company are not specific new products or competitive moves, but changes that undermine the logic of its design.