A thoughtful review | Seth’s Blog

Thanks to Francis Wade for emailing me this review of THIS IS STRATEGY. Francis works in strategy, and I’m so delighted the book resonated the way it did.

Case: You are a corporate strategic planner – someone immersed in defining a future for your organization. But lately, you haven’t been challenged to think differently. Keep reading to see why This is Strategy offers you a unique opportunity.

If you have glanced at the reviews, you probably noticed a spike of one-star ratings.

Given my 5-star rating among others, how can you reconcile the wide gap? You’d probably like to do so before committing precious time and energy. 

Here are three reasons to acquire this book and use it as a catalyst for your professional growth.

1) The content is deep. As a long-term strategic planning facilitator, my work confronts issues that most executive teams skim over in their customary short-term, emergency-driven thinking. Getting them to think about abstract questions for long hours at a time, while sitting face to face with their peers isn’t easy.

Yet, strategic thinking is essential to the future of the company. And the reasons it should be done is where this book starts. 

Godin describes this as a philosophy book. In fact, the first “riff” (i.e. chapter) is titled “Strategy is a Philosophy of Becoming.”

“Who we will become,

who will we be of service to,

and who will they help others to become”

This is strategy.

For some, this will be a reason to drop the book and stop reading. But as you may know, there are significant obstacles to the aspiration stated above. 

Some are practical, and there are lots of books which focus on taking the right steps, in the proper sequence, using the best frameworks to produce a strategic plan. If that’s what you want, look elsewhere. There’s lots of stuff out there on the Balanced Scorecard, PESTER, SWOT, 5-Forces, etc.

Instead, there are deeper reasons why Kodak, Blockbuster and Nokia lost their way. And why Intel seems to be doing the same in 2024, in slow motion. Seth is trying to get at the heart of the matter and he does so by going deeper than almost any book I have read on the topic.

So, if you are someone interested in the craft of strategic planning…the philosophic intent, you are in the right place.

2) The book’s structure is strikingly different from any other book on the topic. There are 297 chapters. 

And each one is set up as a discrete “thought provoker”. 

As such, this is no linear how-to. 

Instead, it’s more like a book of daily meditations that builds on itself in a way that I must believe is unique for each reader. Depending on your current way of thinking, some parts will seem trite, others vaguely familiar and a few heretical.

But that’s OK. The point is not indoctrination.

Instead, he implies that if you buy into the notion of strategy as “Becoming” then this translates into certain aspirations, limits and obligations. Furthermore, these are inescapable.

As strategists we probably know what this means, for there was a time when we had a novice’s understanding of strategy. Now, we look back at who we were and smile. We had no idea of the world that we take for granted today, as we work with organizations (or government, countries etc.) in their quest to Become.

Seth gets it – and he’s the first to offer questions that take us into a range of topics that we can recognize. Even if we never find anyone else who gets it as well, we can still use these for self-study and reflection.

3) But this is no pie in the sky, abstract reasoning. There are four threads the book is built around: systems, empathy, games and time. Mastery of strategic planning requires a comprehension of how they work apart, and together.

They show up in practical ways. I am using snippets from one chapter in a meeting next week to help my audience of CEOs appreciate some ideas which I have found hard to language.

This language is a precursor to the words I’ll develop on my own eventually, but This is Strategy has given me a starting point to put some vaguely held ideas into words.

As strategic planners, this is what we do every day. Arguably, someone did this job effectively with Fujifilm in 2001. Someone else failed to do this with Kodak. 

If you have read this far, you are probably a person who spends a great deal of time trying to produce Fujifilms, and prevent Kodaks. You may lead up a company, or consult. But as you go about your work, you may be nagged by the thought that, given the high stakes, “I need to get this right.”

The point of the book is that to super-charge your commitment you need language and a philosophy, and just a little bit of help, a nudge, to spur your thinking.

In summary – This is Strategy consists of 297 nudges which add up to a fresh, new possibility for you, in your way of engaging in strategic thinking.

November 12, 2024