A strategy is a mixture of policy and action designed to surmount a high-stakes challenge.

When there are many conflicting desires, and conflicting theories about how they can be met, the consequences are indecision and myopic vacillation among various half measures. Creating effective strategy in such situations is extremely difficult or impossible. The central challenge is not the outside world but the conflicting mix of values and pur

The truth is that gnarly challenges are not “solved” with just analysis or by applying preset frameworks. Rather, a coherent strategic response arises through a process of diagnosing the structure of challenges, framing, reframing, chunking down the scope of attention, reference to analogies, and insight. The result is a design rather than a choice

To be a strategist you have to take responsibility for external challenges, but also for the health of the organization itself. To be a strategist you will have to balance a host of issues with your bundle of ambitions—the variety of purposes, values, and beliefs that you and other stakeholders wish to support. To be a strategist you will have to k

I call what passes the joint filters of critical importance and addressability an ASC (addressable strategic challenge). The number of ASCs that can be simultaneously worked depends on the size and resource depth of the organization and the graveness of the most serious.

Carl Lang was attempting to deduce a strategy from strategy “frameworks” such as Porter’s “Five Forces” or Kim and Mauborgne’s “Blue Ocean Strategy Canvas.” But such frameworks are designed to call attention to what might be important in a situation. They do not, indeed cannot, guide one to specific actions. Others try to deduce strategies from des

A more difficult situation is the gnarly-design challenge. Here there are no given alternatives, and there are no good engineering-type models to test your designs against. There is no guarantee of a solution of any kind. There are not clear causal connections between actions and outcomes. You solve a gnarly challenge by beginning to dig into the n

Experienced designers can be seen to engage with a novel problem situation by searching for the central paradox, asking themselves what it is that makes the problem so hard to solve. They only start working toward a solution once the nature of the core paradox has been established to their satisfaction.

Start with the challenge, and diagnose its structure and the forces at work.