Sublime

The actions within the kernel of strategy should be coherent. That is, the resource deployments, policies, and maneuvers that are undertaken should be consistent and coordinated. The coordination of action provides the most basic source of leverage or advantage available in strategy.

There is an old aphorism that the key to strategy is playing the games you can win. Of course, life is not a game, nor is corporate management or statecraft. But the essential idea of focusing where you can “win” is neither trivial nor always followed.

The kernel is a list reminding us that a good strategy has, at a minimum, three essential components: a diagnosis of the situation, the choice of an overall guiding policy, and the design of coherent action.

The purpose of good strategy is to offer a potentially achievable way of surmounting a key challenge.

Use ABZ Planning to formulate a Plan A based on your competitive advantages, and then iterate and adapt that plan based on feedback and lessons learned. (Chapter 3) Build real, lasting relationships and deploy these relationships into a powerful professional network. (Chapter 4) Find and create opportunities for yourself by tapping networks, being

Yet the kernel of strategy—a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action—applies to any complex setting.