The Ultimate

Guide to Better
Strategy
HOW TO CREATE A WINNING
POSITION AND DRIVE BUSINESS
GROWTH

JD Meier
jdmeier.com
 Strategy is a
winning position!
 About This Guide
• My goal with this guide is to equip more smart leaders
to play the game of strategy.

• I’ve been a strategist at Microsoft for more than a

decade, where legions of smart people are ready,
willing and able to beat up your best ideas and
thinking, to see how it holds up.

• I’ve learned you can’t “wing” strategy and you need

frameworks and a process to help you through the
journey.

• The right frameworks are an advantage because they

turn strategy into a team sport.

• You can play any game much better when you can
see it and create a shared map of the gameboard.

I think more smart leaders would focus on strategy if

they realized that strategy is a winning position, and
they had the mindset, skillset, and toolset to play the
game.
 Wisdom of the Ages and
Modern Sages on Strategy
1. Sun Tzu: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to
victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."
2. Richard Rumelt: “A good strategy honestly acknowledges
the challenges being faced and provides an approach to
overcoming them.”
3. Roger Martin: “I would tell you that if you plan, that's a way
to guarantee losing. If you do strategy, it gives you the best
of winning.”
4. Michael Porter: "The essence of strategy is choosing what
not to do.“
5. Peter Drucker: "The best way to predict the future is to
create it.“
6. Steve Jobs: "You can't just ask customers what they want
and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it
built, they'll want something new.“
7. Jack Welch: "Change before you have to.“
8. Napoleon Bonaparte: "Never interrupt your enemy when he
is making a mistake.“
9. Richard Branson: "Business opportunities are like buses,
there's always another one coming.“
10. Jeroen Kraaijenbrink: “Understanding and working on the
content of strategy is key, but understanding and applying an
effective strategy process is equally or perhaps even more
important.”
 A Plan is Not a Strategy

There’s a popular HBR video, called A Plan is Not

a Strategy, where Roger Martin distinguishes
between strategic planning and an actual strategy.

What most strategic planning is in the world of

business, is a list of activities the company says
it’s going to do:

• We're going to improve customer experience.

• We're going to open this new plant.
• We're going to start a new talent development
program.

The results of all those are not going make the

company happy because they didn't have a
strategy.
 Strategy is a Winning Position

“A strategy is an integrative set of choices that

positions you on a playing field of your choice in a
way that you win.” – Roger Martin

According to Roger Martin:

• Strategy has a theory: “Here's why we should be

on this playing field, not this other one, and
here's how, on that playing field, we're going to
be better than anybody else at serving the
customers on that playing field.”
• That theory has to be coherent.
• It has to be doable.
• You have to be able to translate that into actions
for it to be a great strategy.

Planning does not have to have any such

coherence.
 The Strategy Diamond:
How To Create a Winning
Position:
How will you Where will you
make money? compete?
Arenas

Staging Economic Vehicles

logic
What will be How will
your speed and you get
sequence of Differentiators
there?
moves?
How will
you win?

My mentor, industry tech exec, Mike Kropp, introduced me

to the Strategy Diamond early on.

It’s been the most effective tool for me at Microsoft to

create winning positions for more than a decade (and a
great tool to learn how teams lose.)
 What Good Strategy
Looks Like

Good strategy identifies the pivot points that multiple

the effectiveness of effort.

In the book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, Richard

Rumelt shares what good strategy looks like:

• Good strategy almost always looks this simple and

obvious and does not take a thick deck of
PowerPoint slides to explain.

• It does not pop out of some “strategic management”

tool, matrix, chart, triangle, or fill-in-the-blank
scheme.

• Instead, a talented leader identifies one or two

critical issues in the situation–the pivot points that
can multiply the effectiveness of effort–and then
focuses and concentrates action and resources on
them.
 3 Elements of the
Kernel of a Strategy
According to Richard Rumelt, the kernel of a
strategy contains three elements:

1. A diagnosis that defines or explains the

nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis
simplifies the often-overwhelming complexity
of reality by identifying certain aspects of the
situation as critical.
2. A guiding policy for dealing with the
challenge. This is an overall approach to
chose to cope with or overcome obstacles
you identified in your diagnosis.
3. A set of coherent actions that are designed
to carry out the guiding policy. These are steps
that are coordinated with one another to work
together in accomplishing guiding policy.

The “kernel” offers a streamlined approach to

strategy
 Where Business Growth
Comes From
Your business growth comes from a strategy aimed
at channeling your energy into one or two of your
most attractive opportunities.

Richard Rumelt writes:

• “What I would advise is that you first work to

discover the very most promising opportunities for
the business.
• Those opportunities may be internal, fixing
bottlenecks and constraints in the way people work,
or external.
• To do this, you should probably pull together a small
team of people and take a month to do a review of
who your buyers are, who you compete with, and
what opportunities exist.
• It’s normally a good idea to look very closely at what
is changing in your business, where you might get a
jump on the competition.
• You should open things up so there are as many
useful bits of information on the table as possible.
• The end result will be a strategy that is aimed at
channeling energy into what seem to be one or two
of the most attractive opportunities, where it looks
like you can make major inroads or breakthroughs.”
A few tools of
the trade…
 SWOT Analysis

Strengths Weaknesses
SWOT
Opportunities Threats

• SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool you can use to

identify and understand your Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats.

• Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors that affect the

your ability to achieve your objectives, while opportunities
and threats are external elements that you could potentially
exploit or may need to defend against.
 Blue Ocean Strategy
Framework
Raise
Which factors should be raised
well above the industry’s
standard?

Eliminate Create
Which factors that the
NEW VALUE Which factors should be
industry has long competed
on should be eliminated?
CURVE created that the industry has
never offered?

Reduce
Which factors should be
reduced well below the
industry’s standard?

• Create new market spaces or "blue oceans" that are

uncontested, rather than competing in overcrowded
industries or "red oceans" where rivalry is intense.

• Make competitors irrelevant by finding and exploiting new

demand and creating and capturing new markets.

• The goal is to open up a unique market space, thereby

creating new demand and achieving high profits and growth
through differentiation and low cost.
 Porter’s Competitive
Forces Model:
How Attractive is an Industry

RIVALRY AMONG THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS:

EXISTING COMPETITORS: THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS • Barriers to entry
• Number of competitors • Economies of scale
• Diversity of competitors • Brand loyalty
• Industry concentration • Capital requirements
• Industry growth • Cumulative experience
• Quality differences • Government policies
• Brand loyalty • Access to distribution channels
• Barriers to exit • Switching costs
• Switching costs
RIVALRY
AMONG
BARGAINING POWER BARGAINING POWER
OF SUPPLIERS EXISTING OF BUYERS
COMPETITORS
BARGAINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS: BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS:
• Number and size of suppliers • Number of customers
• Uniqueness of each supplier's product • Size of each customer order
• Focal company's ability to substitute • Differences between competitors
• Price sensitivity
THREAT OF SUBSTITUTE PRODUCTS: • Buyer's ability to substitute
• Number of substitute products available • Buyer's information availability
• Buyer propensity to substitute • Switching costs
• Relative price performance of substitute THREAT OF SUBSTITUTE
• Perceived level of product differentiation PRODUCTS
• Switching costs

• Five key factors: the threat of new entrants, the threat of

substitutes, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining
power of suppliers, and the intensity of rivalry among existing
competitors.

• Each force assesses how they affect the ability of a business to

earn profits within their industry, guiding strategic decision-
making.
 McKinsey 7S
Framework
Strategy

Skills Structure

Shared
Values

Style Systems

Staff

• Diagnose and organize a company effectively,

ensuring that it can achieve its goals.

• The framework consists of seven interrelated

elements categorized as either "hard" elements
(Strategy, Structure, Systems) or "soft" elements
(Shared Values, Skills, Style, Staff).

• Aligning these seven elements will help you

implement a strategy more effectively and
achieve organizational effectiveness.
 STEEP Analysis

Technical

Social Economic
STEEP

Political Ecological

• Social: Demographic, cultural trends

• Technical: Innovation, R&D, Adoption, Value of
Tech
• Economic: Business, Fiscal, Monetary Factors
• Ecological: Environment, Air, Water, Land
Quality
• Political: Policy, Trade, Regulations, Stability
 12-Point Vision:
How To Link Vision + Strategy
1. Financial Position.
2. Market Position.
3. Business Areas.
4. Innovation.
5. Insider Perception.
6. Outsider Perception.
7. Workforce Characteristics.
8. Brand: Yes or No.
9. Corporate Culture.
10. Corporate citizenship.
11. Ownership.
12. Incentive Philosophy

I found it super helpful to get structured and

specific when articulating vision.

One of my favorite approaches is the 12-Point

vision from the military.

17
 This is a guiding insight from Jeroen Kraaijenbrink to keep
18 in mind.
Be More, Achieve More
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By JD Meier

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Where to Grow
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JD Meier
https://JDMeier.com

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Greatest Impact!