Strategy

Strategy is the art of devising the most effective and efficient way of taking a system (an organization, one’s career, etc.) from point A to point B. As such, strategic thinking is a foundational skill for any entrepreneur—dare I say, for any human being.

My all-time favorite books about strategy are both by Richard Rumelt: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy and The Crux. A Smart Bear, a blog by Jason Cohen, the co-founder of WP Engine, is also incredibly interesting.

Both Cohen and Rumelt postulate that strategy is simple, deals with present challenges, and requires original insights. This is in stark contrast with most fill-in-the-blanks strategic thinking frameworks (e.g., SWOT analysis): most of these frameworks lead to a lot of hand-waving and the appearance of insight, whereas in reality they’re simply remixing shallow and hardly actionable observations about the state of a system.

Because it deals with systems, strategy is tightly coupled with systems thinking.