This is Kristen O'Brien, Managing Editor at NFX, and this is the founder list. Audible versions of essays from technology's most important leaders selected by the founder community. This is How To Be Strategic, written by Julie Zoo, formerly VP Product Design at Facebook, and now cofounder of In Spirit. So you may have heard that the more you progress in your career, the more strategic you should aim to be. WTF does that even mean? Here's what I used to think being strategic meant.
Setting metric goals, thinking outside the box to come up with new ideas, working harder and motivating others to work harder, writing long docs, creating framework, drawing graphs on a whiteboard. As a result, I tried to do as many of the above as I could. I brainstormed. I wrote epic sweeping docks. I familiarized myself with the language of KPIs and measurements check check check Flint the box is. See how well I was strategizing?
Unfortunately, as it turns out, I was doing the equivalent of strumming a guitar and assuming I was making music. The core problem was that I didn't really understand what strategy was. Nobody had ever explained it to me. I figured being strategic was just engaging in high level product discussions. If you find yourself in the same boat, This note is for you. So what is strategy?
Basically, a strategy is a set of actions designed to achieve a particular objective It's like a route designed to get you from point a to point b, a more interesting question is what makes for a good strategy. And for that, I subscribe to Richard Rummel's definition, A good strategy is a set of actions that is credible, coherent, and focused on overcoming the biggest hurdles in achieving a particular objective. Let's break that down. It should be clear what success looks like.
There should be a concrete plan. The plan should make sense and believably accomplish the objective there should be no conflicting pieces of the plan. There should be a clear diagnosis of the biggest problems to be solved, and the plan should focus resources towards overcoming those hurdles. Given the above definitions, let's look back at my original list of strategic actions.
This is certainly part of strategy, but it isn't enough You also need a credible plan, saying our strategy is to set more aggressive goals, is the equivalent of writing bigger checks and not having a real bank account tied to them. If you don't know the problem you're trying to solve, it doesn't help to brainstorm a bunch of solutions. This is like blurting out an answer on jeopardy before you've heard the question. Working hard is great, but don't confuse motion for progress.
Assuming that working harder is the answer to winning is like assuming thoughts and prayers can solve climate change. Could be strategic, but depends on the content. Be aware of long sprawling epics. Good strategies are usually simple because executing a highly comp plan across dozens or hundreds of people tends to not work well. Frameworks can help explain concepts, but they are not a plan. Having good frameworks is like having a clear map you still need to chart a path.
May look impressive, but is probably classic bat strategy. A lot of jargon and fluff, a lack of real substance. Okay. Great. You say nice definitions, but the question still remains. What should I do if I want to be strategic? Here is the secret sauce. Do more of the following 3 tasks. 1, create alignment around what wild success looks like. This is self explanatory, but hard to do in practice. As a a litmus test, ask yourself this. Imagine your team is wildly successful in 3 years.
What does that look like? Write down your answer. Now turn to your neighbor and ask him or her the same question. When you compare your answers, how similar or different are they? They shouldn't be different. You both work on the same team. And yet there are plenty of reasons they might be different. You might care about multiple outcomes. You might track many goals. Which ones matter the most? What happens if they trade off against each other?
And how does the success of your organization's mission or the success of your business factor in? If the answer isn't clear to all the members on your team, there's work to do. 2, understand which problem you're looking to solve for which group of people. Imagine for kicks that you're looking to transform the future of transportation. What should you do? If your instinct is to start throwing out ideas, flying cars, Uber's with James chairs, hyper looped LA in 2.2. Compose yourself.
Do you know what the problems are with transportation today? Maybe you do. It isn't hard to come up with a list as there are a lot of problems. Traffic, affordability, safety, pollution, boredom, etcetera. Now here's the hard part. What is the relative importance of each of these problems? Which ones matter a lot and which matter a little? For whom do these problems matter? This leads us to the next few sub bullets. Problems don't exist in a vacuum.
There are likely many other people out there who are also obsessed with solving any given problem that are they approaching it? What's being done well and done poorly? Which groups of people are getting ignored? Where are the opportunities for better approach It's silly to start inventing with a blank slate. Understanding a problem well means also understanding your competition and understanding the systems around which this problem exists.
Do your research, competitive analyses, jobs to be done, audience segmentation, market sizing, etcetera. This work is what creates confidence future ideas and what gives us a framework to evaluate them. You can't solve every problem equally Beller. So what problems can you solve better than anyone else? What are you or your team really good at and where are your weaknesses? When in doubt about the above, remember the wise words of Sun Sue substitute enemy for problem.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a 100 battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat if you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle, the art of war. 3, prioritize and cut. Prioritizing is super hard because most of us hate saying no. Imagine this scenario, A and B are debating which features to include in the next product launch.
A thinks X is the most Morgan, while B disagrees and wants to do y. What's the easy out doing both x and y? Of course, no one's feelings get hurt. We get our cake and eat it too, except no. Time, energy, and attention are not free. Remember how a good strategy is focused? Focus is a strategic advantage that lets you move faster on what matters most That's why a tiny startup with dozens of employees can win against a company of 100 or 1000.
The more your plans get watered down trying to do lots things, the less likely you are to have a competitive advantage, either x is more important or y is. If you can't figure it out, go back and do more research to better understand the problem The question to ask isn't what more can we do to win, or how can we make sure none of the things we're juggling or failing, instead ask, what are the 1, 2, or 3 most important things we must do and how can we ensure those go spectacularly?
I tell my team that when the discussion becomes, should we ship this mediocre thing, or should we spend additional time that we don't have to make it better The battle has already been lost. The thing we failed to do weeks or months ago was cutting aggressively enough. Either this thing matters, in which case make it great, don't make it mediocre, or it doesn't, in which case, don't work on it in the first place, people think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on.
But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that are there, you have to pick carefully. I'm actually a proud of the things we haven't done is the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1000 things, Steve Jobs. If you're interested in reading more about the topic I highly recommend Richard Rumelt's book, good strategy, bad strategy. Tons of great examples from the military and corporate world. Happy strategizing.
For more audio essays from the people who've built companies like Instacart, Facebook, Trello, HubSpot, and Dropbox, visit the founder Flint. Atnfx.com Omri subscribe to the NFX podcast at podcast.nfx.com Omri wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kristen O'Brien, and this is the founder list.