Finding the tipping point

Strategy work - good strategy work at least - is very similar to detective work.

The job essentially is to firstly, gather lots and lots of evidence for multiple sources to get a really good picture as to what's happened in the past, is still going on now and how this may unfold into the future.

This evidence is then sorted and categorised, patterns are mapped and insights recorded.

From all of this information, the strategist is ultimately looking for a set of key leverage points - places where an intervening action will result in an exponential improvement of the system.

From the list of key leverage point options uncovered, great strategies are ones where just one critical point of influence is selected and all efforts are directed at that one area that will result in a cascading series for interconnected positive knock-on effects for the organisation.

Great strategy is then not about adding on more work, but rather understanding the true value of the work that is already being done as well as what could be done - discarding all of those superfluous options and selecting just the one area that will have the most impact on the future of the business.

Concentrated effort applied to just one opportunity is the ideal. Long lists of goals and objectives and fluff just complicates things.