The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists

Effective people gain insight through finding and concentrating attention on the crux of a challenge—the part of the tangle of issues that is both very important and addressable (which can be overcome with reasonable surety).

I think of strategic challenges as arising in three basic forms: choice, engineering design, and gnarly. Most that I see are gnarly, perhaps because companies don’t ask for help with easier ones.

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

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.

The concept of a crux narrows attention to a critical issue. A strategy is a mix of policy and action designed to overcome a significant challenge. The art of strategy is in defining a crux that can be mastered and in seeing or designing a way through it.

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

Third, avoid the bright, shiny distractions that abound. Don’t spend days on mission statements; don’t start with goals in strategy work. Don’t confuse management tools with strategy, and don’t get too caught up in the ninety-day chase around quarterly earnings results.

In all cases, strategy is the process of confronting and solving critical challenges. I emphasize this because there is a widespread misconception that a business strategy is some sort of long-range sketch of a desired destination. I encourage you to think of strategy as a journey through, over, and around a sequence of challenges.

Don’t start with goals—start by understanding the challenge and finding its crux.