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Strategy

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Lenny's Written Position

Shipping is not success; success is shipping work that has meaningful business impact, high ROI relative to alternatives, and moves you closer to your strategy.

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During a crisis, companies should first determine which of three buckets they fall into: seeing growth, falling apart, or chugging along, and adopt a corresponding strategy of acceleration, survival, or pivoting.

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When expanding internationally, start by making two sorted lists of potential markets: one ranked by short-term signals like existing demand and localization ease, and one by long-term TAM and execution ease, then merge them.

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Product-market fit is not a one-time discrete event; competitors arrive, markets evolve, and what felt like PMF can fade as patterns change.

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For marketplace companies, if you have conviction in an adjacent opportunity with clear PMF, expand into it as soon as the organization can support it rather than waiting too long.

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The root cause of nearly all bad planning processes is a lack of understanding of roles -- who is responsible for what, when.

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Nailing the problem statement is the single most important step in solving any problem, and simple projects with vague problem statements go in circles while complex projects with strong problem statements sail smoothly.

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Podcast Moments

Richard Rumelt00:00:00
“Don't call it strategy, call it an action agenda. Begin to try to identify the one or two key challenges that can actually be addressed and what are we going to do about it? What are the coherent actions we're going to do to take these on?”

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · Richard Rumelt

Richard Rumelt00:00:00
“It's huge numbers of people out there willing to sell you advice on mission and your vision and your values, all these things that have to be in place before you can have strategy. That's not true.”

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · Richard Rumelt

Richard Rumelt00:00:00
“We're going to go after this and here's the action steps we're going to take to do that. That's the essence of what you're doing when you're thinking strategically.”

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · Richard Rumelt

Cutting Room Floor

Guest insights on this topic that Lenny hasn't (yet) written about in his newsletters. Potential material for future posts.

Richard RumeltUnsynthesized
“Don't call it strategy, call it an action agenda. Begin to try to identify the one or two key challenges that can actually be addressed and what are we going to do about it? What are the coherent actions we're going to do to take these on?”

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · Richard Rumelt

Richard RumeltUnsynthesized
“It's huge numbers of people out there willing to sell you advice on mission and your vision and your values, all these things that have to be in place before you can have strategy. That's not true.”

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · Richard Rumelt

Richard RumeltUnsynthesized
“We're going to go after this and here's the action steps we're going to take to do that. That's the essence of what you're doing when you're thinking strategically.”

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · Richard Rumelt