No Bullshit Strategy | Simple systems for founders who want to get unstuck and grow fast | Bestselling author | Founder of Basic Arts.
Do you know how many books I had read about strategy when I started my business? ZERO. That’s right, I founded a “strategy consultancy” without having read one single book on the subject. And it’s not like I’d done much other formal learning either: No big courses No degrees No bosses to show me the ropes I’d done some learning around ad strategy, since that was my background - but when it came to the rest I was purportedly an “expert” on, I knew… nothing. (Or nothing official anyway). Now I don’t condone such brazen ignorance, and perhaps if I had been a more diligent student I’d have moved much faster. But what this DOES show is the value of another form of learning - one nobody talks about: → Observational learning You see although I’d not studied any strategy theory, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought about the subject. I was just approaching education from a different angle, one where I: - Observed businesses I liked - Asked myself why it was that they worked - And then created theories from the patterns I saw Often I was very pleased with these theories, believing I had stumbled across truly fresh ideas, only to learn years later that I had “discovered” something which was a basic strategic principle, that I could've learned in 10 mins had I bothered to pick up a book. I even had a TEDx talk on the subject of “refusing to compete”, only to be mortified a couple of years later when I read Blue Ocean Strategy ??♂? So, it wasn’t all great. BUT it did have one massive advantage that formal education doesn’t: → It meant I was able to take ownership of my knowledge. It may have been flawed, and it may have been incomplete, but it was mine. By developing ideas “bottom up” I understood them on an intuitive level that wouldn't have been possible if I'd learned the same thing “top down”. This then leads to a massive degree of *fluency* in the field that goes beyond the realm of normal expertise. Although I in NO WAY want to draw a comparison between me and him, this style of learning is exactly how Jimi Hendrix taught himself to play the guitar. He knew NOTHING about music. And could never read it to his dying day. He just explored the guitar “bottom up”, from pure curiosity. ...and talk about fluency. DO NOT NEGLECT THIS FORM OF LEARNING. Do not defer only to authority. Do not deny the validity of your opinions. Do not dismiss your own experience. Do not only learn codified knowledge, but generate your OWN knowledge. Even if it’s unoriginal. Even if it’s flawed. This is how you tap into the source of a subject. The rest? It's just second hand representation. P.S. if you want to supercharge it, WRITE about your thoughts. There is one newbie strategist who I’m connected to on here, Joseph Givens, who is doing this fearlessly - simply giving his takes on business stories he’s interested in, without feeling the need to tie it back to established “theory”. ?? __ ?? Like this? ?? Repost it! #strategy #founder #ceo
Alex M H SmithI need to hear this. Thank you. Who needs to read a book on strategy, when you can write one? ??
Mats Georgson, Ph.D.
9 个月
You are absolutely right. It was once the intention of universities: not to cram you full of knowledge, but to turn you into a thinker. Regrettably that got ridiculed and then lost with academic mass education.
Elena Ruiz Arenas
9 个月
I also love to create my own theories and frameworks by observing and connecting the dots. But I also love to read about marketing, strategy, and businesses; understanding other’s ideas and ways of thinking is also really powerful in learning. Yours is one of my pending books ??
Adrian Ion
9 个月
Love this, Alex M H Smith! The way I know it, there is: - explicit knowledge, which can be readily verbalized or transmitted in writing, and - tacit or implicit knowledge, which cannot be transmitted one-2-one and requires own experiences to acquire. Interestingly story-telling (or observing others ??), seems the closest we can get to acquiring implicit knowledge from others.
Joseph Givens
9 个月
ayy thank you for the shoutout and kind words! I’m taking notes from one of the best
Ayaz A.
9 个月
Interesting. As a left-handed guitarist, Hendrix was also playing a right-handed guitar holding it upside down. Love your example in the context of strategy and observational learning. By and large, Hendrix knew the techniques, but he didn't live by them. I wonder if Eddie Van Halen was also an observational learner.
Everyone's journey is different, and I absolutely understand what you mean by generating your own knowledge. As long as you are learning from the best and constantly growing, it doesn't matter if you are a Harvard graduate or if you learn from YouTube.
Alex Whitty
9 个月
I do read. A lot. But I don't read to acquire knowledge, I read to see what others think and challenge my own thinking.
Dr. Michael Gerharz
9 个月
Also, as a left hander Hendrix couldn’t find “proper tools”, so he used a re-stringed right handed guitar which contributed to his sound and to his iconic appearance that guitarists instantly recognize due to the flipped headstock of the guitar.
Island-inclined editor-in-chief @ Brandingmag {· Creator of Editorial Marketing
9 个月Same for me. I never read a branding book—I think to this day, I’ve never read a branding book—but became editor-in-chief of Brandingmag right out of college. One of my biggest clients for editorial marketing remains my first client: Publicis Sapient. Both happened at a time when the slate of “best practice” knowledge was still super clean for me, meaning that I cultivated my intuition and ability to decipher what holds versus what doesn’t quite early. All of this was possible because of mindset, which always come first. To this day, I include a framework for editorial marketing in my trainings, but I always leave it for last and in shorter form. Most of my time is spent teaching comms and marketing teams how to THINK editorial rather than DO editorial. And that makes all the difference. Anyone can copy a best practice, but not everyone has the patience and dedication to truly embed their knowledge to the point of wisdom.