Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy

Your Next Five Moves explores how you can improve your business and your life by learning how to strategize.

Know What You Want

You need to identify what matters the most to you to put a strategy together that fits your level of commitment and vision.

Making a plan and committing to it will unleash all the energy and discipline you’ll ever need.

If you’re looking to disrupt an industry, you’d better be armed with the right story, right team, right data, and right strategies.

When you’re working on something you deeply care about, you will find the enthusiasm to make life a great adventure.

Your Own Blue Ocean

Rather than competing in games where you’re an underdog, find unexplored new markets in which you can win.

Examine both your unique skill set and the competitive landscape to find your “Blue Ocean”.

Process the competitive landscape by asking:

Is this a place where you believe you can do well, given who your competition is?
Do you possess the necessary resources to compete?
Do you need to acquire specific resources before you can compete?
Have you educated yourself about the competition?
Is there some additional benefit your competitor has that you can’t beat, no matter what you do?

Master The Ability To Reason: The Power Of Processing Issues

Before you act on a problem, you must first “process” what’s happening. The key to success at all levels of business is to know how to process issues:

What Is Optimal Processing?

The ability to make effective decisions based on access to information at hand with the highest odds in your favour

Subjecting every difficult choice, problem, or opportunity you face to a rigorous mental analysis

Playing out strategies, seeing the hidden consequences, and sequencing a series of moves to permanently solve problems

But to be great at processing problems, you need to take responsibility whenever you can.

Master Building The Right Team: Fundamentals

Working effectively with others will mean the difference between enjoying the process and desperately seeking a day job while hiding under your desk.

Instead of being selfish and looking to see what you could take from others, focus on what you could give them.

What To Define:

What benefits are you currently offering to others?

In what way do people improve by associating with you?

How many lives have you changed positively in the past year?

Think about who you need to help you achieve your long-term objectives. Take care of them, and they’ll back you up.

Your Drive

You can break down Drive into four categories:

Advancement. Wanting to reach the next goal (promotion, deadline, or task)
Individuality. Having the lifestyle you desire and the security to do so
Madness. Competing against others and proving you are the best at what you do
Purpose. Self-actualization and having a positive impact on others.
You can have more than one type driving you. However, a driver can stop working in your favour.

The less your business depends on you, the more valuable it is.

Running Out Of Your Drive

People often feel lost after a big deadline because their driver is suddenly gone.

To solve this, you need to dive deeper into your Purpose.

Define your purpose by asking:

How do you want to be remembered?
How do you want to make an impact on other people’s lives?
What does the greatest version of yourself look like?

Decide Using Investment Time Return (ITR)

Find at least 3 alternative solutions to a given problem. The more choices you have, the better are your decisions

Determine the money investment of each solution

Determine the time investment of each solution. Is it a 3-month project or a 6-month project?

Calculate the return for each solution.

What are the impacts on your revenue and cost?

Figure out the breakeven point of each project

Make a list of the blind spots or things that could go wrong with each decision. If you only think about what could go right, you will overlook the downside.

Learn Each Individual’s Love Language

Ways you give and receive love into 5 categories:

Quality Time. One-on-one time of undivided attention
Words of Affirmation. Appreciate the effort verbally
Gifts. Offer something to symbolize your appreciation
Acts of Service. Be at their disposal when they need you
Physical Touch. Non-verbal use of body language and touch to show appreciation

Show people that you take the time and care needed to understand what they want.

Closing Thoughts

A simple rule of business is that in order to get, you have to give. Most amateurs are experts at making demands. What they fail to do is offer value first. When you put yourself into the other party’s shoes and lead with how they will win and make money, it will be natural for them to give you what you want.

Don’t complain that the game is rigged. Instead, find a game in which you have a differential advantage.

Eight traits to become a great processor

Ask lots of questions. Having more data leads to making better assumptions
Don’t care about being right or wrong. Be only interested in the truth.
Don’t make excuses. Wasting time and effort on why things went wrong is not productive
Embrace challenges
Be curious. You can’t solve problems without knowledge
Prevent more problems than you solve. Spot yellow flags before they turn red
Learn to negotiate
Focus on permanently solving a problem. Don’t put band-aids on problems