Recently, I was questioning why I felt uneasy about some strategy talks I’ve been having with my peers. While something felt off, I was unable to articulate the why. Things didn’t come together till my friend, Scott Horn, threw in this great heuristic. It is a wonderful litmus test if you are thinking strategically about your approach.

If the opposite of your strategy doesn’t exist, it is not strategy at all.

Imagine we made a Music app with the highlight feature being “Playlists”. In order to compete with many dozens of music apps out there, You start looking around. We have…

Pandora making intelligent playlists out of music attributes
Google making playlists out of gathered data
Spotify allowing customers to share playlists with each other

Perhaps, our playlist solution needs to be “curated by experts”?

If our competitors are already doing this well, then it wouldn't be a great approach. It would not grant us any competitive advantage.

If a strategy is what all competitors are already executing on, then it wouldn't mean much. It would be “business as usual”. It wouldn't help the product grow as much.

Update: Having done more reading, this is possibly where these words of wisdom originated from: https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/library/strategy-development/roger-martins-unconventional-wisdom#.VRW6sZOsUYc

Wonderful read with far better examples!