The act of writing a strategy leads folks through a systematic analysis, so, even if we don’t share them, writing these documents helps us work through quite a few challenges, both overwhelming and mundane.

It doesn’t matter how much you plan, you’ll still get some stuff wrong anyway. Don’t make things worse by overanalyzing and delaying before you even get going.

First, writing the decisions down is essential. Only when one writes do the gaps appear and the inconsistencies protrude. The act of writing turns out to require hundreds of mini-decisions, and it is the existence of these that distinguishes clear, exact policies from fuzzy ones.