My name is Alex. 

I have spent the last 12 years obsessing over strategy, 

The result? A first principles approach forged in fierce environments. Developed while working with elite people at elite firms doing elite level strategy. Across 50+ strategy projects,  100s of investment deep dives and 1000s of hours of self-study. 

Carefully curated for your convenience.

It’s the season of sharing. The stairway to strategy sagehood. The principles, process, practical tools that took me a decade to assemble. The why, what and how. 

The recipe I wish I had 12 years ago.

But first, some context. 

90+ % of time is execution.  All wasted if you wander the wrong way.  That’s what bad strategy gives you. Pain and poor performance.

Yet, Bad strategy is all around us. 

The sort that  feels like fluff. That leads to terrible trajectories. Opportunities lost, value destroyed and years wasted. 

It comes from a combination of confusion, capability gaps and cognitive dissonance. And for good reason.

You see, strategy is a serious struggle. 

Successful strategy requires a series of skills. A careful combination of principles, patterns, probability, psychology, and process. A chain longer than a locomotive, where one weak link can derail the process. In some ways, strategy is similar to cooking. Small mistakes grow into large flaws in the final product. Replace sugar with salt when baking buns, and the buns become a big blunder. 

Small things make you stumble.

Here’s an example.

I once sat in a board meeting that became a lifelong lesson in non-linear effects. One director, well intentioned, pressed for a deadline and tighter control on a large capex project. This was perfectly reasonable. But a small misunderstanding of intention caused a chain reaction of stress, strain and sub-optimal decisions that traveled halfway around the world. This persisted for an absurd amount of time. Many months of work were lost on at least three occasions. It cost millions. Eventually, the sustained stress and strain culminated in a heart attack. 

The story ended well and the guy became healthy (and rich), in large part due to some timely “good” strategy. But the tour of tyranny was avoidable. Because once I understood the real root cause, the problem was easily solved. 

Strategy is hard because it is both broad and deep. To operationalise strategy this latticework of mental models must be provided. All needed skills must be included, all the way down. Otherwise, you easily fall into the bad strategy trap.

There are secrets to good strategy, but these are not mysterious. They are hidden in plain sight, but scattered across the content universe.

Strategy is a problem solving puzzle wrestling with complexity.  This is what makes it interesting. It's hard work that spans domains and disciplines.  To invoke Charlie Munger, good strategy requires a latticework of mental models. 

I’ve collected the pieces, and will, over a series of many posts lay it all out. 

Starting with the definition of strategy and then the only framework you will ever need to structure strategy.