Strategy

Negotiation with a twist

Think forward, reason backward

Visualize Strategic Situations

Anticipate outcomes

Unpredictability is key

Unpredictability in game theory

Using game theory to achieve a goal

The art of selective elimination

When to follow and when to lead

Strategic decision making

Outdo your adversary

Stimulate evolutionary progress through high levels of experimentation, opportunistic action, and purposeful selection of what proves successful

Maintain a fixed core ideology of values and purpose while driving relentless change in everything else - the central dynamic of enduring great companies

Set bold, clear, compelling goals that energize the entire organization and stimulate extraordinary progress through audacious commitment

Embrace both extremes simultaneously instead of choosing between them - reject false dichotomies to build enduring greatness

Improvement is eternal and infinite; build a system where every person, every day, surfaces problems and makes things a little better

Identify and ruthlessly eliminate the seven categories of waste that inflate costs without adding any value for the customer

Ask why five times to penetrate from symptoms to root causes, turning every problem into a permanent improvement

When the future is uncertain, let strategy emerge through learning; when the path is clear, execute deliberately

Resources, Processes, and Values determine what an organization can and cannot do

Organizations undergo sudden behavioral shifts at predictable thresholds, just like water freezing, and understanding the physics lets you manage the transition

Replace cost accounting with three measures -- throughput, inventory, and operating expense -- to make decisions that actually improve profitability

A relentless cycle of identifying, exploiting, subordinating, elevating, and repeating to drive ongoing improvement

Every system has exactly one constraint that limits its throughput -- find it, fix it, and find the next one

Determine whether you are entering an existing market, creating a new market, or resegmenting an existing market to choose the right strategy

When customer validation fails, change direction based on what you learned rather than pressing forward on a broken plan

A systematic evaluation of 17+ value capture models to choose or innovate the framework by which your venture extracts revenue from the value it creates for customers.

A bottom-up, customer-validated method for quantifying your beachhead market size in annual revenue to ensure your venture targets a market large enough to sustain it.

A disciplined process for narrowing from hundreds of potential markets to one beachhead you can dominate, then expanding from that position of strength.

An iterative loop of goals, problems, diagnosis, design, and doing that drives personal evolution and achievement

Mapping influence networks and building strategic alliances to advance your agenda beyond direct authority

Five business situations requiring fundamentally different leadership transition strategies

Tear down the wall between those who act and those who know to create an organization that acts smarter and learns constantly

Scale the trust and adaptability of small teams across an entire organization by networking teams together

Strategy is an endless pursuit of winning, not a destination you reach once

Work backwards from what would have to be true to find the best strategic choice

The heart of strategy is choosing your playing field and defining how you will win on it

Five interconnected choices that define a winning strategy for any organization

Follow nine rules that violate traditional management wisdom to achieve hypergrowth.

Identify and design around the obstacles that cap your company's growth trajectory.

Design your business model around market size, distribution, high gross margins, and network effects.

Navigate five phase changes from garage startup to global giant as each stage demands a fundamentally different approach.

Prioritize speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty to build dominant companies.

When no open position exists, create one by reframing the competitor who currently occupies the space in the prospect's mind.

It is better to be first in the mind than it is to be better in the marketplace.

Create measurable brand guarantees that differentiate you from competitors and drive customer loyalty.

Get everyone on the same page by condensing your entire strategic and execution plan onto a single page.

Set objectives close enough at hand to be feasible - targets the organization can reasonably be expected to hit, even overwhelm

Refine a single draft instead of trading competing proposals

Your walkaway power is your real negotiating power