To be a strategist you will need to embrace the full complex and confusing force of the challenges and opportunities you face. To be a strategist you will have to develop a sense for the crux of the problem—the place where a commitment to action will have the best chance of surmounting the most critical obstacles. To be a strategist you will need

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

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

Insight does not automatically awaken at our call. It cannot be guaranteed, but it can be aided. If you have not grasped the thorns of the problem, you cannot expect insight into a solution. Insight is helped by practice at the feel of sliding and shifting points of view. Insight into strategy is much aided by understanding the power of focusing

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

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.

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.

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

The key source of design insight is a clearheaded diagnosis of the structure of the challenge, especially its crux, by employing a tool kit of persistence, analogy, point of view, making explicit assumptions, asking why, and recognizing your unconscious constraints.