Book Review: This is Strategy

This is Strategy: Make Better Plans

Seth Godin

Authors Equity (October 22, 2024)

Without strategy, systems don’t work—or if they do, they don’t work for long.

In our complex, ever-changing world, strategic thinking is essential. And if you follow Seth Godin’s advice, you’ll gain the clarity you need to think strategically and make better plans.

Godin is a business genius and master storyteller, which is what makes his books so powerful. In This is Strategy, he helps you take all the things you know (how technology has evolved, how cultural and societal changes happened, and the stories behind legendary business successes and failures) along with some things you probably don’t know and pull it all together to build a strategy that will work. It doesn’t matter if you’re a solopreneur, a huge public corporation, or somewhere in between, you can use Godin's advice.

This is Strategy is 298 numbered riffs (defined as a monologue or spoken improvisation on a particular subject—and it’s a great format for a book) that make individual points illustrated with relatable real-life examples as they build your understanding of what to do and not do as you create an effective strategy.

When I read a book that has a few strong takeaways, I feel like my time was well spent. This is Strategy has them on almost every page. Here are just a few:

34. Low-hanging fruit isn’t. It’s all been picked.

36. One telephone is worthless.

40. Strategy and tactics. Strategy is a philosophy, based on awareness of our goals and our perception of the systems around us. Tactics are the hard work we do to support our strategy. But great tactics don’t help if the strategy is working against us.

76. Creating the conditions for change. Culture defeats tactics every time, which is why strategy is often about creating culture.

97. Tactics are not strategies. If your tactics work, they should advance your strategy. If your strategy is flawed, all the successful tactics you engage in won’t help.

107. Perpetuating the scam. Creating tomorrow by repeating yesterday is not a useful way forward.

111. Choose your customers and choose your future. We often get stuck in a customer loop, dancing ever faster for the customers we have instead of spending time and resources replacing these folks with the customers we’d like to have instead.

200. The telegraph and the skyscraper. It was only the invention of the telephone that permitted knowledge workers to have an office in a skyscraper. Alexander Graham Bell changed real estate.

224. The game belongs to the children who play it. It’s easier to help someone find what they want than it is to change what they want.

I could go on, but I won’t. Get the book for yourself and have everyone on your team read and discuss it.

This is Strategy is packed with incredible nuggets of wisdom. You’ll keep pausing to ponder and figure out ways to use what you just read.

“Strategy is a philosophy of becoming,” Godin said. “Six months or a year from now, when the person you are becoming, when the organization you are building, meets the person you hoped to be, how will that go? What are we building? Where are we heading?”

This is Strategy will help you answer those questions today—and keep answering them as you move into tomorrow.