ONE QUICK QUESTION TO TEST A STRATEGY
I asked a doctor friend of mine what he would pack in his medical kit if he were heading to the front lines in Ukraine. He replied, ‘Only strong drugs.’ You can’t hand a vitamin pill to a guy with a bullet in his abdomen.
If the destination is ambitious, the decisions must be of proportional magnitude. That’s why one of the three quick control questions when evaluating a strategy is: Does the depth of the decisions match the magnitude of what you want to achieve?
This question is crucial because ineffective strategies—those born from comfortable, superficial decisions—are more common than you’d think. People tend to avoid problems, and the best way to dodge them is to steer clear of tough decisions.
We’ve all seen it: people masterfully create the illusion of moving forward. They draw up brilliant strategies, but when you examine the list of decisions involved, they’re all small-scale, insignificant moves.
Never execute a strategy if you know it doesn’t cut deep enough. It’s far better to sit idle in a corner, fully aware that you’re doing nothing but thinking about what to do, than to fool yourself by staying busy day and night with trivial tasks.
This text is from the book How to See What Others Don’t (English) / Ver lo que otros no ven (Spanish), available on Amazon.
Consultor TI & Ciberseguridad | Gestión de Riesgos | Transformación Digital | Gestión por Procesos | ISO 27001 | ISO 22301 | ISO 31000
1 个月I totally agree, these topics are well explained in your book “How to See What Others Don’t”.? It is very important to consider the Principle of Proportionality, decisions and actions have to contribute in a relevant way to the strategic objectives. We must leave the comfort zone, full of patchy solutions or based on known and historical decisions and actions, in which there is not a stagnation of value, but rather a destruction of value due to the opportunity cost of doing things better. A strategy is for making radical changes, and it must be developed by talking with many collaborators and then well communicated.? It is essential to avoid the halo effect, not to fall into the deception and conformism that we are doing things well, losing awareness of the high levels of uncertainty when making judgments, which do not have due analysis and evaluation at a quantitative and qualitative level.