Strategising Skills—Play-by-Play

My Strategy Squad

Strategising skills without the Fluff

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The human side of strategy extends beyond the confines of boardroom discussions or annual corporate retreats. A robust strategy is developed and implemented through hard work in the trenches.
Strategy is only validated through successful implementation, something that the fluff and verbiage —so often the product of Board meetings and expensive retreats that masquerade as "strategy" — fail to realise.
More coordination in strategic design, fewer gurus, and a holistic perspective on the critical challenges businesses and non-profits face are sorely needed.
Strategising skills are in great demand to address these fundamental issues. Yet, while there are literally millions of articles on strategy paradigms, theories and models (we call them "PMT"), there is somewhat less so on the skills required to "Get Strategy Done." The basic processes, routines and abilities needed remain elusive. Training and coaching, rehearsal, simulation and testing of this skill set are hard to find.
Through innovative — read FUN — approaches at My Strategy Squad, we aim to address this apparent gap in strategy-building skills.
NARRATIVES
My Strategy Squad explores the narratives of strategy practice--the skills needed to develop and implement strategy--from collective, people-centred points of view. Those people are small-business and startup owners, entrepreneurs, and managers within SMEs. In addition, we produce content and coach nonprofit managers and employees in the often highly challenging world of non-market strategy.
We help create strategic compositions that are more akin to intricate symphonies than to written works. These include "reference narratives" that form the blueprints for entire workflows of practical strategy concepts, approaches, and actions. All are unique to your situation or context, and critically, they are developed and implemented by YOU.
Along the way, we examine stories of conviction, optimism, success, and failure from the perspectives of people working in the trenches. This is the human or social side of strategy, also known as strategy-as-practice. It is the theoretical foundation of the coaching approach at My Strategy Squad.
THE HUMAN SIDE
The human angle of strategy highlights the fallibility of strategising encountered by startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. We see yawning gaps between proprietary business know-how (however valuable) and strategising skills or strategy-as-practice. However good your edge or nonprofit mission is, without a strategy, like so many others, you are destined to fail. Your functional knowledge — your proprietary EDGE — has little real foundation. Sooner rather than later, this will become apparent.
SQUAD APPROACH
My Strategy Squad embraces collective creativity and wisdom —and, with it, difficult conversations. We don't dwell on the "PMT" of strategy. The field is too broad, and concepts are too fragmented. Strategy conceptual frameworks are frequently too abstract and high-level to be of practical use. On the other hand, we don't dismiss valid concepts, supported by academic or practitioner evidence.
We embrace the wealth of strategy concepts as a strength of the field. We don't limit or restrict conceptual approaches, nor do we try to "shoe-horn" our process into your context. This is a key difference and advantage of our approach.
We work on making better decisions by developing skills in engaging, memorable ways. Through podcasts and play — YES, PLAY. We adopt the latest learning techniques to help you get started quickly. No more reading hundreds of articles. We have done all of that for you. And we won't be charging you by the hour—all we do here is free.
OUR PROCESS
Reference narratives — unique to your situation — are a key part of the personal approach to your context. Nobody understands your local situation better than you, and every possible theory and process should be on the table as we design a strategy together.
We build simulations in games and test the robustness and resilience of such narratives. Learning through play is an indelible part of the coaching and learning journey.
Along the way, we frame and reframe problems to discover new perspectives, improve judgment, understand bias, and gain invaluable insights from other squad members. We draw on the wealth of conceptual approaches and procedural tools from the strategy field to deliver decisive actions that address high-stakes challenges.
WHAT IS STRATEGY (DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE ONE?)
A good strategy doesn't have to be the best solution, but it does have to be resilient enough to adapt and survive. A lack of strategy, or "non-strategy", leads to failures with far-reaching and painful consequences. We can't say that the 90%+ failure rate of businesses is due solely to a lack of strategy. Still, it is a very significant factor in limiting success and contributes to the dreadful failure rates seen around the world across every sector.
We coach practical skills through our 'short and sharp' podcast, Twitch streams, on YouTube, TikTok, and at Substack. Strategising skills need to be acquired, practised and tested. We have found no better way to ingrain such skills through challenge, testing, recall, and demonstration in real-time strategy games. We will even develop our OWN strategy games to demonstrate both the vacuous and simplistic nature of most firms'/non-profits' "strategies" and to explore the business logic underpinning most small-world models used to create strategy (even at the highest levels — including Fortune 500 companies).
OUR PROMISE--The 4Cs
We strive to help our squad develop a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of strategy, including non-market and social factors. We explore risk, uncertainty, behavioural economics, foresight, issues, stakeholder management, and more familiar aspects of competitive advantage or non-market leverage.
A unique yet accessible policy informs our approach—a Tetralogy of Strategy called the "4Cs Framework." By thoroughly understanding strategy concepts and conduct within your context, we assist our squad (usually those responsible for all aspects of their organisational strategy) in building on their existing knowledge and quickly developing unique strategy compositions. These narrative frames—strategic reference narratives—are field tested by the squad.
Along the way, we implement innovative methods to enhance strategy practice, provide fascinating demonstrations of the human side of strategy in action, and offer in-depth materials to help squad members apply the 4Cs (via Substack).
While this approach to acquiring strategy skills is fun, engaging, and free of fluff, it is also a full-time commitment for us. Fortunately, all of this is entirely pro bono for our squad members and will always remain so.