The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists

Ryanair’s cost of carrying most passengers was about equal to its fares. Its profit came from its fees—the charges for baggage, for priority boarding, for fast-tracking through security, for choosing your seat, for chips and drinks aboard.

I asked Paul to stop thinking of “creating real differentiation” and “developing new capabilities” as being strategies. “They are,” I said, “more accurately described as being ambitions, intentions, or aspirations. However wise they may be, there is no bite to them. You need to take each and break off a smaller ‘chunk’ that can be tackled and overc

Strategy began when people realized that telling warriors to ‘go out and fight the invaders’ didn’t work. Leaders had to impose a structure, a design, on how the group would fight. In a modern business, a strategy is the exercise of power to make parts of the system do things they would not do, if left to themselves.”

The two critical judgments behind Plan Dog were that the United States could not decisively prevail in both Europe and Asia at the same time and that defending Britain was more important than defending territories in the Pacific.

The first part is judgment about which issues are truly important and which are secondary. The second part is judgment about the difficulties of dealing with these issues. And the third part is the ability to focus, to avoid spreading resources too thinly, not trying to do everything at once. The combination of these three parts lead to a focus on

In my view, the crux of Netflix’s situation is the opportunity to use its current international advantage to create sufficient material to feed both its domestic and its growing international markets.

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.

Mastery over a gnarly challenge arises only after the crux has been exposed when you see or recognize the locus of tension in the web of conflicting desires, needs, and resources.

The company’s strategic plans are short documents that describe financial goals and show the milestones for getting there. She is looking for a “simple road map… a plan the CEO can take to the board, with steps for achieving the goals.”