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What is good strategy?
When I am asked this question I often answer along the lines of what Richard Rumelt says in his book “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy” from 2012. That the backbone of a good strategy is a clear problem diagnosis, a clear approach to solve the problem, and aligned, coherent actions directing focus and resources to that approach.
But every time I give such an answer or look at similar definitions of what determines a good strategy, something bugs me. The explanations just feel too… mechanical? Where is the strive to do something genuinely different from competitors? Where is the creativity? And is strategy only about the content and not about the form?
Interestingly, when the journal Strategy Science in 2018 had a two-part special issue on the origin of great strategies (see here and here), things suddenly appeared less mechanical. Specifically, creativity in the form of innovative and contrarian insights took center stage in several of the contributions as the ingredient that make leaps in progress possible.
So good strategies are tightly mechanical, but great strategies are also creative?
Maybe it is this simple. That it is the creative elements that separate good from great.
So let's put this to the test. Not by diving into the role of creativity in strategy directly (which I have written about before here), but by being creative with the description of good strategy itself. To see if we can creatively hack our way to a better understanding of what good strategy is (or should be).
The creative hack
The creative hack I will run shortly is inspired by one of my favourite artists, Evan Roth. In 2011 he visited NHH to give a talk about the link between art, creativity and technology. Besides being a renowned contemporary artist, Evan is also the founder of the Graffiti Research Lab, and a self-proclaimed art-hacker.
His talk was excellent (see e.g this TED talk from the same period), but there was one particular art intervention he showed on stage that really stayed with me. It went something like this: Evan had first copied all the text from a guide by hacker and computer scientist Eric S. Raymond on “How to become a hacker”. Then he performed the simple hack of searching and replacing the word “hacker” in this guide with the word “artist”. Finally, he showed the following lines from the guide that now was about “how to become an artist”:
Being an artist is lots of fun, but it’s a kind of fun that takes lots of effort. The effort takes motivation. Successful athletes get their motivation from a kind of physical delight in making their bodies perform, in pushing themselves past their own physical limits. Similarly, to be an artist you have to get a basic thrill from solving problems, sharpening your skills, and exercising your intelligence.
Pretty amazing, right? If I hadn’t revealed that the text was originally about hackers, I am sure you would have just nodded your head and thought it was a description of characteristics of a good artist. But even more inspiring was the meta-point. With simple and playful elegance, Evan turned the very hacker playbook on hacking itself, while at the same time introducing a new perspective on both art and artists.
The replication reveal
Evan swiftly continued his talk by showing other projects, but I wasn’t done with the hacker-hack just yet. A few days later I found Raymond’s guide online, redid Evan’s exercise by replacing “hacker” with “artist”, and read the whole thing.
From the full read it was clear that the section Evan showed on stage wasn’t the only part of the manifesto that also made perfect sense for artists. Much of it made sense, revealing hidden similarities between artists and hackers.
But the fuller read also revealed that other parts didn't really fit. One example is the excerpt below on “basic hacker skills”, here paraphrased as “artist skills”:
Most of the things the artist culture has built do their work out of sight, helping run factories and offices and universities without any obvious impact on how non-artists live. The Web is the one big exception, the huge shiny artist toy that even politicians admit has changed the world. For this reason alone (and a lot of other good ones as well) you need to learn how to work the Web.
I guess few intuitively agree that the work of “artist culture” helps run factories, offices and universities. But interestingly, after chewing on that sentence for a bit, it might make some sense after all. By nudging us to see the potential role of art and artists in a new way.
Maybe artists could or even should be more influential in running businesses and organizations? What would that mean? What would the results be? The VR company Magic Leap seemed to think so when they hired the science fiction author Neal Stephenson to think up new possible futures. Maybe there is something here?
Another standout description is that of the web as “one huge shiny artist toy” and the claim that artists need to “learn how to work the web”. This wouldn't raise eyebrows today, but I am pretty sure most artists didn’t view the web as a potential pencil, brush or canvas back in 1997. If done 15 years earlier, the hack would have revealed a future hidden in plain sight.
My takeaway is that while the phrases Evan showed on stage were brilliant to reveal parallels between art and hackers, the misfits carry a greater creative potential as they nudge us to think about something familiar in unfamiliar ways. Which can be a powerful way to release new insights and ideas.
Could we do the same with strategy?
Ever since hearing Evan’s talk and redoing the experiment myself, I have pondered if similar hacks could be done to other concepts and texts. Recently, it struck me that the word strategy might be a fitting candidate.
Strategy, like art, has its own established wisdoms, practices and sacred texts, that carry their own implicit assumptions about what good strategy is and should be. And just as Evan Roth’s hack revealed unexpected truths about artists, maybe we could learn something new about strategy through a similar act of creative vandalism?
To put this to the test I will rely on another famous manifesto-like text: the principles of good design by Dieter Rams, the legendary chief of design at Braun. In the late 1970s, Rams penned down his ten principles for good design in an elegantly simple, ten point list.
A simple search and replace of the words “design” with “strategy” on this list gives us Rams’ ten principles for good strategy:
Good strategy is innovative
Good strategy makes a product useful
Good strategy is aesthetic
Good strategy makes a product understandable
Good strategy is unobtrusive
Good strategy is honest
Good strategy is long-lasting
Good strategy is thorough down to the last detail
Good strategy is environmentally-friendly
Good strategy is as little strategy as possible
Do the principles make us any smarter about what good strategy might be?
The logical fits
The first thing to note from the list is how many of the principles seem like a natural fit.
Good strategy should be innovative (#1), seeking new opportunities rather than assuming that innovation possibilities have been exhausted. Good strategy should make products useful (#2), emphasising user benefits and eliminate unnecessary distractions. Good strategy should make a product understandable (#4), and ideally be self explanatory. Good strategy should be honest (#6), and not give promises that cannot be kept. Good strategy should be long-lasting (#7), focusing on enduring needs rather than fleeting fads. Good strategy is environmentally friendly (#9), conserving resources and minimising negative external externalities.
The fact that these principles makes sense indicates that design and strategy might share more DNA than often considered. But it adds up, as both fields strive to make purposeful choices under constraints to create value.
The beautiful misfits
Let’s then turn to the misfits on Rams’ list. The ones that intuitively doesn’t appear obvious, and see if they can help us see good strategy in a new light.
Good strategy is aesthetic (#3).
For something most associate with unaesthetic consulting decks, being aesthetic immediately seems weird as a principle for good strategy. It’s the content of strategy that matters, not the wrapping. Right?
Rams viewed aesthetic quality as inseparable from functionality, believing that only well-executed concepts could achieve true beauty. And when you think about it, truly good strategies do have an internal elegance and coherence that makes them almost beautiful in their logic. When all the pieces fit together there is something aesthetically satisfying about how it all connects and aligns.
An illustrative example is Tesla’s original Masterplan from 2006. An incredibly novel and complex strategy that is beautifully summarized in only four simple bullet points:
Build sports car
Use that money to build an affordable car
Use that money to build an even more affordable car
While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options
To me, this is aesthetic strategy. But to arrive at an elegantly simple strategic logic like this, choices need to be crystal clear, and causal links need to make sense. Demanding aesthetic elegance therefore becomes more of a quality control mechanism than a prettifier. After all, If you can’t make your strategy feel coherent and beautiful, you probably haven’t thought it through clearly enough.
Good strategy is unobtrusive (#5).
Requiring good strategy to be unobtrusive is another principle that immediately seems a bit off. After all, we often think strategy should be front and center for everyone in an organization to align their choices and behaviours. How can we do this without being obtrusive in some sense?
Rams’ point, however, was that design should be neutral and restrained to give space for users to express themselves when using a product. That good design almost disappears into peoples lives.
Transferred to strategy, this could mean that good strategy works so well that people don’t really notice it. And that by doing so, good strategy gives room for self expression in the form of local creative decisions aligned with the overarching direction.
Unobtrusive strategy then is like a well-designed compass that people don’t look at in known terrain, but that becomes front of mind to guide choices when reaching a fork in the road or when the fog makes visibility low. While obtrusive strategy is a detailed map that people need to constantly look at, where someone else have tried to dictate your every step.
Good strategy is as little strategy as possible (#10).
This principle seems like the most counterintuitive of them all. Don’t we need more strategic thinking, not less?
Rams point with “as little as possible” was not to think less, but to eliminate non-essentials and concentrate efforts on the aspects of a product that truly matter. Or “less but better” as he put it.
Therefore, the principle wouldn’t mean as little strategy as possible for its own sake. It would more be the minimum strategy possible while still being innovative, understandable, honest about your promises and premises, and so forth.
This principle can thus be seen as the close relative to Einstein’s famous quote that “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. Where the other principles on Rams’ list becomes the constraints defining what “possible” actually means.
Good strategy is thorough down to the last detail (#8).
The final misfit seems almost paradoxical in light of the other principles on Rams’ list. How can “thorough down to it's last detail” coexist with “as little strategy as possible”?
Rams point with thoroughness wouldn't be to make a strategy document longer, more detailed and more comprehensive. His point was that no elements should be arbitrary or left to chance. And that the more we strive for elegant simplicity by stripping things down to their essence, the more important the remaining elements becomes.
And this suddenly makes a lot of sense too. When you formulate a strategy in fewer words, or summarize direction in fewer choices, each remaining element must be more precise. Thoroughness therefore isn't about documenting every detail. It’s about ensuring that every detail we choose to keep has been thoroughly considered. The difference between “use that money” and “use the money” in Tesla's masterplan might seem trivial, but when you only have four bullets, even the choice of article matters.
The simpler something is, the fewer places we have to hide unclear logic or inconsistent choices. Simple is hard. Complex is simple. But according to Rams, it is worth the effort.
Did we find gold?
Zooming out, I at least think we have found something valuable with this experiment. A fresh angle to think about what makes a strategy good.
An angle suggesting that the form also matter for strategy, not just the content, and that best strategies aren’t necessarily the most comprehensive or detailed. They might be the ones that achieve maximum clarity with minimum complexity.
Rams’ final principle - as little as possible - elegantly summarizes this angle by recognising that every additional element in a strategy has costs: it consumes attention, creates confusion and dilutes focus. Other principles of good strategy, whether from Rams’ list or from strategy, then becomes the constraints that prevent harmful oversimplification. But within those constraints, the goal is elegant, impactful simplicity.
While the ten principles won’t substitute conventional descriptions of what makes a strategy good, it does bring some fresh ideas to the discussion that I think many would benefit from taking seriously.
In a world drowning in 50-100 page strategy decks no one reads, understand or remembers, Rams’ principles offer an alternative path: radical simplicity with purpose. Directing attention to the elements that truly matter, shredding away distracting clutter, and putting in the time and effort to elevate the form and shape of the formulation to fit its intended purpose.
Tesla’s four-bullet masterplan changed an industry. The thinking behind it was complex and contrarian, but the formulation itself is simple, clear, memorable and powerful. Every word earned its place.
As little strategy as possible, but not less. That might not just be good design. It might also be good strategy.