Creating a No Bullsh*t Strategy with Alex M H Smith

In this episode of The Better Leadership Team Show, I sit down with strategy advisor and author Alex M. H. Smith to break down what real strategy looks like—and why most leadership teams are misaligned without even realizing it. We explore why strategy is not a goal, why “better” is not a winning position, and why companies succeed when they refuse to compete and instead create truly unique value.

Alex shares practical insights on how businesses of any size can discover what makes them different, double down on those strengths, and confidently let go of everything else. We also talk about the surprising parallels between strengths-based leadership and strategy, and how leaders can use both to build high-performing organizations.

Learn more about Alex’s work and resources at: https://www.basicarts.org/welcome

Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach

Chapters

• 1:58 The Importance of Alignment in Leadership Teams
• 3:53 Defining Strategy: It's Not a Goal, It's the How
• 7:00 Good Strategy vs. Bad Strategy
• 7:47 Creating Unique Value in Business
• 17:24 The Pitfalls of Competing and the Power of Differentiation
• 21:05 Ensuring Your Unique Value Matters
• 22:55 Challenges in Identifying and Solving Customer Problems
• 24:20 Why Customer Feedback Can Be Limiting
• 24:57 Zooming Out: Industry Analysis
• 25:58 Contrarian Ideas and Market Value
• 26:31 Nintendo Switch: A Case Study
• 31:03 Applying the Strategy to Mature Businesses
• 33:16 Choosing Where to Be Bad
• 38:50 Strengths-Based Leadership and Strategy
• 42:37 Alex's Approach to Strategy Consulting
• 46:38 Resources and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Alex: 0:02

Effective value creation is that whatever it is you are doing, it must be something that has never been done before, that nobody else is offering.'cause if not, there is no value in it. you are just a leach. You're just a parasite on that market. So this value, whatever it is, it must be completely unique if you can get to the point where you are selling people something that they want. And you were the only game in town for that thing. You were the only person providing that thing. Then your business is gonna make money completely automatically. But very few companies ever get to that stage. But that's the goal.

Mike Goldman: 0:42

You made it to the better leadership team show, the place where you learn how to surround yourself with the right people, doing the right things. So you can grow your business without losing your mind. I'm your host and leadership team coach, Mike Goldman. I'm going to show you how to improve top and bottom line growth, fulfillment, and the value your company adds to the world by building a better leadership team. All right, let's go.

Mike: 1:14

If you think strategy means buzzword bingo in a boardroom, Alex M H Smith will make you think again. He's the author of No Bullsh*t Strategy, a book that shows founders and CEOs how to think and lead. With clarity instead of jargon. As a strategy advisor to some of the world's most interesting brands, Alex's frameworks force focus and inspire bold action. His large LinkedIn and YouTube audiences follow him for one reason. He makes strategy simple, practical, and real, which I think we all need, especially as things are changing so fast. Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex: 1:56

Cheers, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Mike: 1:58

So Alex, from all that great experience you've got, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?

Alex: 2:08

Well, I can only argue, I can only really answer with the one thing that I see. Most leadership teams not having, and that thing would probably be alignment. And I think the word alignment, that sounds actually, that sounds quite, that's a bit of a sort of bullshitty, buzzwordy type phrase. so to be more specific about that. A big job of a leadership team is to tell the organization what to do. And in order to do that, you actually need to know what you want your organization to do. You actually have to have an instruction to deliver. And what I see with most leadership teams is that they actually have a complete lack of substance to what they want the company to do. They do not have an instruction. They might have the, they might, you could have all the leadership skills. That you want in the world. But if you don't have an actual instruction to deliver to the team where you say, Hey guys, we want you to do X, not Y or Z, then what good are any of those leadership skills? They aren't any, they aren't any good at all. So it's not really the skills of leadership that I see missing, although that probably happens as well. It's more just the fact that they just don't really have anything to say. I think that would be, the first thing that springs to mind.

Mike: 3:22

Interesting diving into that a little bit. So when I work with leadership teams, you know, we talk about strategy and I have an assessment that basically before the session, one of the questions ask them if they even have a strategy and what they think of that strategy. And more often than not, I get half the leadership team saying they've got a strategy and they're aligned with that strategy. And half the leadership team gives an answer that leaves me to believe they don't have a strategy at all. And it's like, do you guys work for the same company or

Alex: 3:53

Yeah,

Mike: 3:53

Some of it is, everybody's got a different definition of what strategy is, and maybe you could set it, maybe strategy is that instruction set, but how do you define the word strategy? What is a strategy?

Alex: 4:07

Well, it's funny what you say there because Yeah, I. would say that even. I would go so far as to say that even if, like, if there were 10 people in the room and and if eight of them think there's a strategy and two of them don't, that means there isn't a strategy. Right. These little crack chinks in the armor. Right. they actually show that, like, that this is fundamentally missing.'cause it should be pretty, it should be pretty obvious now, you know the definition of, yeah. An instruction for the team is not obviously the definition of, of strategy, but since we are talking about this from the perspective of leadership, I do think that a good way to actually define strategy, is. One of the biggest errors that you'll get is that people define strategy as a goal. So people will say something like, our strategy is, I mean, this is really stupid. example. Normally it's a bit more subtle than this. Sometimes not. People say, oh, you know, our strategy is to double our revenue by 2027 or something like that. And then leaders, they think to themselves, well, look, we are great leaders. We know what we're telling our team because we're saying to them, guys, I'm the leader. My instruction to you is to double the revenue by 2027. Now, it, that never occurs to them that like you can't just tell somebody a goal. And then expect them to actually be able to do that. What people need, what the team needs is they need the how as well of how are we gonna achieve that goal. So the strategy essentially becomes the, how we all know that you have these like big ambitions and these big growth ambitions, for the business. But just setting an ambition, any idiot can set an ambition. I could say for my own business right now that I want, you know, I want to have. the biggest strategic consultancy in the whole world by the end of this decade, fine. That's such an easy thing to say, but do I know how to achieve that? Actually, fundamentally, no. No, I don't. and I can't expect if I have a team, I can't expect them to just magically, if I don't know how to do that, they're not gonna know how to do that either. So what you need is to be able to say to the team. you know, we want to, you know, triple our revenue by the end of the decade, whatever your goal is. And the way that we are gonna do that is by dot, fill in the blank. And whatever you're filling in the blank with there, the instruction that's gonna make that happen, that for better or worse, is your strategy. so yeah, this isn't the like. The total sort of definition of what a good strategy versus bad strategy looks like, but I do think it's very important, the first hurdle for people to get over, the most basic hurdle for them to get over is that understanding that strategy is not a goal, it's the way that you are going to achieve the goal.

Mike: 6:58

So it's not the what? It's the how. And now let's dig into good strategy, ver versus bad strategy. So you say most strategy is bullshit. Di dig into that a little bit for us.

Alex: 7:11

So the next thing, yeah, like you say, we, it's a very basic understanding to get from, like I say, it's not what we're trying to achieve, it's how we're gonna get there. Fine. But then that's you're still left with a lot of questions. We still don't really know, you know, in that scenario, it almost becomes like, say a strategy is just a good idea, and that's extremely unhelpful if we try to come up with strategy because it's almost like what we're saying to ourselves is, Hey, don't worry guys, just come up with a really clever idea and then you'll be fine. I dunno what to do with that. I'm, I'm left sort of floundering, so to make it much, much easier. what we basically need to do is we need to just take things back to first principles for a second and think about what actually is a business. Because if we understand what a business is, all businesses, every business on the face of the planet, if we understand what they all have in common, then it's much easier for us to understand what a good strategy is going to look like for. for every single business. And then we've got a much firmer idea of what we're shooting towards now. What do all businesses have in common? A a kid selling friendship bracelets out of her bedroom to like Halliburton or something. What do they all have in common? And the answer to that is that every single business fundamentally is a system that is designed to generate value, which it then exchanges. For other value ie Money. When we understand that, we can see that the extent to which a business is gonna be successful comes down to just one thing. How much value is this business able to create? You know, the biggest companies in the world, apple, whoever, these are the biggest companies in the world for a very basic reason, they just managed to generate more value than other companies. And so therefore they managed to collect more money. So, a strategy, then the focus of any strategy is very simply a question of how are we gonna maximize the amount of value that we create? We don't need to worry about how we're gonna collect that value in particular. We don't need to be thinking about how can we earn more money. That, that happens as a natural byproduct. Your entire focus needs to be, how can I give as much value as possible out to the world, out to the market? And if you can answer that question very effectively. Then you are gonna have a business that finds it very easy to make money. Now, there's one other little wrinkle that I just wanna put in here quickly because, there's a trick to this. You gotta remember that when your business is setting about creating value, it's not enough to just give people something they want. That's extremely easy to give people something they want because we can just say, what do people want? What do people need? I dunno, people need socks. Right. We all know that everybody wears socks, so I'm gonna create a business that makes socks and I tick the box. Aren't I clever? I'm providing value to the market. But of course, in that situation, you actually aren't providing value for the simple reason that this form of value is already well catered for. It already exists. You aren't actually bringing any new value to the market at all. You're just doubling, tripling, quadrupling up on what already exists. So a very important component of what constitutes. Effective value creation is that whatever it is you are doing, it must be something that has never been done before, that nobody else is offering.'cause if not, there is no value in it. you are just a leach. You're just a parasite on that market. So this value, whatever it is, it must be completely unique if you can get to the point where you are selling people something that they want. And you were the only game in town for that thing. You were the only person providing that thing. Then your business is gonna make money completely automatically. But very few companies ever get to that stage. But that's the goal.

Mike: 12:18

So, so if I'm in an industry where I am providing services. That competitors also provide, I may, you know, I'm doing digital marketing and I've got competitors that are providing digital marketing along the same lines as to what I'm providing. Saying new value, something that's never been done means we're going further than just saying or I'll ask it as a question. Does that mean we need to go further than just. We're gonna do this and do this better, is doing the same, doing something similar, but doing it better? Is that new value? Is that never been done Before Or is that part of what bullshit strategy is? We're just gonna do the same thing, but do it better.

Alex: 13:07

So we're actually, so it is good'cause we are, we're basically crossing each one of the hurdles. That make people fall down and be crap at strategy, we crossed hurdle one. It's not a goal, it's how you achieve the goal. We crossed hurdle two that the focus of it is on value creation. Now we come to hurdle three, which is exactly what you said. The hurdle three is. oh, it must be about just if we do something better, then that is we're producing more value than our competitors, therefore we win. Now, it would be nice if that was true, and that feels like it should be true. Unfortunately, it isn't true. Better Is seen by the market as a synonym for the same, right? It's seen, like if you say that X is better than Y, what you're saying is X is the same as Y, but a little bit more. And the reason that this is extremely ineffective is because, number one, from the outside. it's very hard for people to determine what is better than another. And everybody says that their thing is the best, and how am I really meant to evaluate that? It's quite difficult. It all just becomes claims versus claims. Secondly, people actually don't tend to buy the best solution in a given market. People tend to buy the most famous. Solution or the one that is somehow most accessible to them. So like, if you and a competitor are offering the same basic service or well goods, but you, yours are better, but your competitor is a household name, they're the Goliath of your industry, they're always gonna win that. They're always gonna win that fight. You know, the marketplace is littered with the, the bones of better. Businesses that did not manage to overpower a stronger, richer, but worse competitor. So overall, it's a phenomenally ineffective way to approach strategy, whereas if what you are doing is something completely. Unique, something completely different. Then the question of who is better doesn't come into it. Then from the market's perspective, the only question is, well, look, I need x. Mike's company is literally the only company that does X, so therefore, whatever he's charging, I'll pay it and I won't shop around and I'll just go to him. Easy life, right? That is the dynamic that you want to create. And so, and then I now, and then it is worth pointing out that, you know, you used a good example there, like a very typical example. Like, okay, so digital marketing services, right? So we could all understand that like. in a category of digital marketing service providers. Of course, a lot of the nuts and bolts of what they're providing is the same as each other. In the same way as that like, you know, BMW, Ferrari and Tesla are all cars, right? So we all know that like the basics of like, it gets you from point A to point B that is like the starting point of that category. So we're not saying that, you know. If you are a digital marketing services company, you've got to do some of the basics of whatever that is, just in the same way as all the car companies are at their at root, just a car where you then win. Is by what you do on top of that, what you do in addition to that, which none of your competitors do. So you are kind of saying essentially to the market, yes, we do the general basic kind of stuff that you would expect from a player in this category, but we do it in this completely new way that you've never seen before and which is actually gonna produce some differentiated value for you in addition to all of the undifferentiated value that we're just gonna. Take for granted. Does that make sense?

Mike: 16:42

it makes a lot of sense and it, you know, I watched, but before doing this and kind of doing some research before this episode, I watched your TEDx. Which I thought was really good and really helpful. And so I wanna hit on some of those points'cause I think we're kind of, we're kind of right there at where you really focused in the TEDx and you said a few things I want to dive into. One was, you win when you refuse to compete. Talk, about that a little bit because I think it follows on pretty nicely with the point you just made of being different. Not better.

Alex: 17:17

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, being better is obviously an explicitly competitive stance because you are going up head to head, toe to toe with that other thing. That other company that you claim that you are better than that is the competitive dynamic. It creates commodification. those businesses by competing with each other, what happens, and this is just an inevitable endpoint of competition always, and everywhere. The businesses, they gradually become more and more like each other because, you know, if one goes left, the other has to go left. If one goes right, the other has to go right. And then before you know it, these two things are basically the same thing that's commodification. That is what happens when you try to be better than each other. You end up the same as each other, and that is what happens when you try to compete. And that is why competing in and of itself is actually a very dangerous sort of, way of being way to approach the market by contrast. If you refuse to compete, what are you saying? If you refuse to compete, what you're basically saying is that my competitors, whoever they are, you know what? I'm gonna let them have their part of the market. I'm gonna let them have their set of customers. I'm gonna let them dominate the particular value offering or whatever that they are good at. I'm gonna completely surrender that. And then through that process of surrendering, I give myself the freedom to go and create something new without feeling the pressure that I need to match what they're doing at any given point, which of course would suck us back in. To that competitive, that competitive paradigm. So to give you very basic, very famous example of this, just textbook strategy stuff, like when Southwest Airlines created the low cost, airlines category, the way that they did that. Was they chose to give up on business travelers as a segment in of the air carrier category. Now all of their competitors relied on and to this day still do relied on business travelers'cause they were the most lucrative part of the market. But it's impossible to serve business travel as well, and to serve low cost travel as well. In order to reduce the costs, you basically have to like sacrifice the business travelers. So Southwest, they just said to, you know, American, United, whatever. They said, you know what guys? You can have them. You can have them. We are just gonna completely sacrifice this. Let go of this. We are not going to compete with you. We are just gonna turn over here and we are gonna build this new thing. And it was the and, and the rest is history. One of the greatest strategic moves of all time. Do you see how like. the necessary creativity to produce that new value that they, that, that they did. It had to begin with a comfort in choosing not to compete and a comfort with letting their competitors have what is theirs, which, you know, people, they don't like to do. we think that we can have it all. We think that I'm gonna gobble up the whole market. That's ne that's never gonna happen. That can't happen.

Mike: 20:20

Yeah, I think a great example in the US of a whole industry that did a crappy job of that is the department store industry. You know, when I was a kid, you know, many years ago in the 1970s, there were a bunch of department stores and they were all kind of different. They all, you went there for different things and then over the decades they all just started becoming each other. And looking alike. And I think, you know, other than, you know, e-commerce killing a lot of what they did, I think that's a big part of what killed the department store is they all just became the same company with different names. They weren't trying to be different. Now what it brings up for me is the question, and I'm thinking about this not only for my clients, but my own business as a leadership team coach is. When, how do we help to make sure that we come up with something that makes us different? That matters, right? We can come up with something that's never been done before that makes us different and the marketplaces. Who gives a shit, you know, you do that. We don't need that. You know, talk a little bit about, you know, is it all about understanding who your ideal client is first and what their problems are? Like how do we go about not only coming up with something that's different, but knowing that it matters in the marketplace to the people that matter to us.

Alex: 21:49

Yeah. Yeah. great. Great question. So, I mean, one little caveat I'll just begin with is that like for sort of. Solopreneur type businesses. it's worth pointing out that any type of business that has got not just like three or four big competitors but has got like 10,000 competitors, the pressure to be truly unique is much less for the simple reason that your prospective client is not gonna be seeing all of the options. So like if you are like a department store and you've got like four other big competitors. You need to be doing really pure, hardcore strategy. Maybe for the likes of you and me, we've got a little bit more wiggle room. So I wanna just point out that like, you know, you don't have to go insanely unique when you are a very small business because chances are any prospect you speak to. We'll never have heard of somebody who does something vaguely similar to you. So you are a bit protected in your anonymity. But putting that aside, answering your question, so this is where, this is one of my most sort of, definitely my most controversial opinion that people have a lot of trouble with. but I think it's really important. So what you will get, you'll hear, see a lot of advice out there that says something along the lines of, you need to understand your ideal customer. You need to know what their problems are. You need to know what they want, and then you need to solve those problems. And then everything's gonna be great. And that sounds very logical, but it's actually terrible advice. The reason it's terrible advice is because, well, the mate, so I could, I'm gonna try and I could go, I could really go on a rant about this, so I'm gonna keep it

Mike: 23:29

Do it. Do it. Feel free to rant.

Alex: 23:32

so the main reason is because, the. The stated observable problems of customers in any given industry tend to be quite narrow and tend to have been already solved a million times over. You are not going to discover a new problem. To solve. Because if there was a whole bunch of customers out there saying, oh my goodness, if only someone was offering blah, blah, blah, someone would be offering blah, blah, blah. Right? We're in 2025. Now most markets are really quite mature, and so most markets have effectively been solved for, and so. you are never gonna come up with something that's high leverage and a new form of value by doing this. Because, like, leading is like anything else, your customers are very unimaginative. They don't know what they would want. All they're gonna tell you is, well, gee, it would be great if you were cheaper or something like that. And you're like, Ugh. Like they're gonna, they're gonna tell you things that aren't very helpful for you. so, so this is why people end up. Basically not being able to find a good high leverage idea, a good high leverage strategy, because they're asking the same questions that all of their competitors are asking, and they're getting the same answers, or their competitors are asking, so what do you do instead? What you do instead is actually paradoxically, forget your customer for a minute. just forget them. And instead, what I want you to do is I want you to look at your industry. I want you to zoom out and take a look at a helicopter. Look at your industry as a whole. Let's say it was digital marketing services, like you said before. So if you are in that game, you will have a decent idea of what the norms are in the digital marketing world, how companies operate, what they value, what they don't value, the way that they structure themselves, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. You just need to understand what is the shape of this industry. And then you need to look at, okay, well what would be new in this industry? What would be a kind of contrarian take? What would be another way of doing things here? What would be the opposite approach to what people are doing? You just need to initially just focus on newness. and you need to focus on doing something which kind of counter signals what else is going on in the market in some way or another. Now, to your point. You could start to come up with some quirky new ideas and you might say, well, that's, they could be different. Fine, but does anyone care? But what you then do is that when you've got an idea of like some sort of contrarian idea or position in the market, then you wanna ask the question, okay, under what circumstances would this be valuable? To a customer or what type of people would this be valuable for? Or can I envisage a way that this could produce new value? So. Classic example of this is how, you know, the Nintendo Switch, number one console, of all time. The way that emerged came via Nintendo deciding to basically make a much less powerful console than the PlayStation in the Xbox. Now, power is a central sort of value offering of that category, but Nintendo cut against it. And at first glance, what you see here is that, like you'd say, okay, what is the value of a less powerful console to the customer? And you're, the immediate conclusion you come to is there is no value. Like, why would I want a less powerful console? But you're just not thinking hard enough in that scenario because obviously what they managed to do is they figured out, well, hang on. Less powerful console can be a smaller console. A smaller console can be a portable console. A portable console can open up a whole new form of gaming, party gaming, stuff like that, and suddenly, boom, there's a whole new universe of gaming that Nintendo could completely dominate and occupy in an uncompetitive way whilst PlayStation and Xbox are having a big old scrap with each other. So do you see how like. These. Random ideas, like you'd be surprised how you are able to then tie them. You are able to twist them into something which would be genuine new value to customers. But here is the real key when you play this game, when you do this backwards approach that I'm describing. This is how you start. You start answering questions and solving problems that customers never knew that they had. Nobody was asking for the Nintendo Switch. You could not have generated the Nintendo Switch out of a sort of customer research speaking to your customer's point of view, and yet. It's really clear when you understand what the benefits are of this new thing you've created that people would want it. It's, you know, it's not like it's not a big leap. As soon as you understand what the Nintendo switches, it's pretty. You are on pretty solid ground to say, would people want this? yes, I think they would even though nobody ever asked for it. And you look across all of the great recent brands of history, they all have this in common. They all gave people something that the people didn't know that they wanted. you just have to have the art of like, you just have to go through the art of starting with difference and then understanding how that difference creates value. that is the way to do it.

Mike: 28:56

and just to be, to kind of put a highlight on this is so much of what we are. Taught. And what we do as leaders or coaches or consultants is we focus so much on the who first? Like who is that, you know, core customer? what, you know, how could you best solve their problems? and you're flipping that around and saying, you know, you're starting with the white space. Where is the white space in the marketplace where, you know, where are you gonna be different? And then. Who does that difference matter for? Which is interesting. what comes to mind here? I'm just trying to be really pragmatic about this. If I am starting a brand new company, that idea, you know, hits me. Wow, that's a great way to, to think of it. But what if I've got a company, you know, a. You know, 50 million,$75 million in revenue company. So, you know, not a little mom and pop, but not necessarily a multi-billion dollar company. I've got this mid-size company and I've been around for 30 years, and I have a client base and I have, you know, a fairly loyal client base in a certain part of the market. It would seem like, you know, doing this could have you make a. You know, major shift, make a really big left or right turn in what you're doing, which could be more harmful than good, at least in the short term. and I guess what I'm asking is if you've got a co a, a company that's been around for a while doing certain things for a very specific target market, how do you make something like this work without. Risking the market and the revenue that you've already built or is the nature of this that you are risking that?

Alex: 30:52

no, not at all. as a great follow up, a great follow up question. So, no. What happens with a mature business is that the process is identical to what I described, but it's actually a lot easier. And it's a lot narrower.'cause what you basically do is we work on the principle that if your business is quite successful, if your business has traction, if your business is earning money, that means that it is to some extent providing value. and often in a way that you don't even understand as the person running the company. But like, you know, some companies, they just. Fundamentally bad ideas and they can't get traction. And they, not only do they go outta business, they never get into business. If you've got this company with 70 million turnover, we know that's not you. We know that there's actually, there's something there. So the strategic process then essentially becomes all about identifying what is that thing and then doubling down on it and amplifying it. And basically like you are looking for. you just need to look. you are still looking at the industry level. You're still looking at the landscape that you are working within, but instead of asking, what could we do different, a speculative question you are asking the question. What do we already do different? So you are actually identifying the quirks, the weirdness, the weaknesses that already exist within what you are doing. And sometimes these things are things that you've never noticed before. Sometimes these things are very subtle, and then you are pulling on the thread of, well, hang on. What would it mean if we were to really kind of lean into this and own it more and more? So, do you see what I mean? It is identical to what I was saying before, but it's actually easier because instead of the world being your oyster and you could just do kind of anything, in this case, you are actually only looking for the things which are kind of, aligned with and true to the business as, as it is.

Mike: 32:56

So that's gonna drive me to the next big idea that hit me from your TEDx, because when you said, you just said double down and amplify, and I love that. So when you double down and amplify. That I think implies that may take a some level of investment in time and money to double down and amplify what, which leads my brain to something you said in the TEDx, which was you have to choose to be bad where your competitors are good, because if I'm gonna double down and amplify and not, Not create an environment where everything is important, then I, if I'm gonna double down and amplify here, I have to be okay. Sucking over here. I have to be okay being weak over here, so I could be incredibly great over here. So, and I know. That's not a new concept for me, but it's an important one. It's one that CEOs and leadership teams have a really difficult time with because they automatically think, well, no, we can't be weak anywhere. we've gotta be great everywhere. So talk about this idea of actually choosing where you're gonna be bad, where your competitors are. Good.

Alex: 34:13

So when, it's funny because In a sense, if you're doing it right, it shouldn't really feel like weakness because we're talking about you becoming very clear on the unique value that you are bringing to the market. If you orient your whole business around whatever that thing is, then you are going to be optimizing for that thing and you are almost not gonna notice. The places where you are bad is in the same way as that, like, you know, the, in the Ferrari hq, they don't sit around all day being stressed about how their cars have bad fuel economy. Right now, technically Ferrari have bad fuel economy, but if I'm running Ferrari, I don't kind of feel like that's a problem because I'm just doing something different. So. but as you're going through this process, yes, it is possible that, you know, you have that moment where you are like, wait a minute. How can we do this? But still offer good fuel economy, figuratively speaking, but you're gonna have to do it because, I mean, I know it's a truism, but people don't actually think about it perhaps specifically enough. We all, we've all heard the phrase, you can't be all things to all people. Well, what does that actually mean? The reason you can't be all things to all people is because certain characteristics are simply, they cannot coexist with other characteristics. That's just physically impossible. So, if you are going to have characteristics A and B. you can't also have character characteristics, y and z no matter what you do. So like a very, a very neat example of this, which, possibly in the United States, this is a bit of a dated example now, but it will still, I think it'll still help land this idea for people. A perfect market. Is where the competitors in that market have this kind of balancing yin and yang approach to each other. Where each of them, they're each a sort of mirror, mirror image of the opposite, where it's impossible for either one to encroach onto the other one's space. So a nice example of this, we can see historically in the relationship between Ben Jerry's and Haagen Dazs, now look at these two ice creams, right? People would say, oh, Ben Jerry's Haagen Dazs. Competitors with each other. And of course technically that's true, but Haagen Dazs. Okay. Their choice of flavors, they do the classic flavors, Belgian chocolate, strawberries, whatever. What flavors the Ben and Jerry's do, they do the weird, unique flavors. Fish, food, rocky road, whatever. what about in terms of the brand aesthetic Ben Jerry's is all childish, and fun. Haagen Dazs is sophisticated and classy. what about in terms of ingredients? Haagen Dazs focuses on minimal ingredients. Ben and Jerry's has got an ingredients list as long as your arm with all this like crazy stuff that's going on in there again and again. What we see with these two brands is that they are each the polar opposite of each other and they're each occupying a very distinct place in that market, in a way where it would be impossible. For them to encroach on their competitor's space without basically blowing up what their brand is all about. So there, there's this really nice equilibrium going on there Now, you can, so you see, you could see how, like, is it a weakness for Haagen Dazs not to be childish. No, it's a, it's because it's not even the game they're playing. Why would our Haagen Dazs want to be childish? That's not what they're all about. So you need to view your weaknesses in the same way. And what you're gonna find when you're going through the process is that there are certain things like. You are never gonna sacrifice something that you are already killing it at, because that's probably gonna be an ingredient of where you're gonna find your leverage. What you are gonna sacrifice is you are gonna find, there are certain things that you will always quite shit at, and which none of your customers are picking you because of that thing. You are trying to do it because you think, oh, we have to do this thing. But actually no one really cares. And so when you actually sacrifice these things, you don't lose anything. You don't lose anything. So it's a bit of an illusion sometimes that you need to maintain these bits of your offering that you are already behind the curve at. Just explore what would happen if you just gave them up. Just give them up completely and then you get freedom to really be what you're meant to be.

Mike: 38:39

the big aha for me. Just about 30 seconds ago. So thank you. It is, and I never equated these two things, but I'm a big fan, of strengths-based leadership. and what I mean by that, have you ever heard of or read anything by Marcus Buckingham?

Alex: 38:57

No.

Mike: 38:57

For, for, he wrote a book called First Break All the Rules, nine Lies About Work. really wonderful stuff. And the whole idea, he didn't invent it. He's just like, the face of this for a lot of folks is this idea of as individuals, and we use this when we're leading others as well. Let's not, don't try to fix your weaknesses. Figure out what your strengths are and leverage those strengths. I talk to leaders all the time about someone in their organization who may not be performing very well right now, but that could be because within their role we're part of their role is trying to do things that they don't have a natural talent for. But if we could figure out in an individual or in ourselves what we have a natural talent for. And delegate away all the crap. We don't have any talent for that. We're not good at that. We don't like doing Then. we can create greatness. You're not gonna create greatness by kind of fixing weakness. You're gonna create greatness by maximizing strengths and I talk to leaders about that all the time as it relates to their own self-leadership and how they focus as it relates to how they coach and develop their people. But you've helped me understand that this same concept applies to strategy the same way we may take the. You know, the salesperson who's great at building relationships, but just not very good at closing the deal. They don't have that killer instinct as a salesperson to close a deal. Well, what if you can change their role to focus on business development, which, and that role is just about building relationships, which they're great at. They don't have to be the ones to close the deal. What we're saying is take that same idea and apply it to company strategy.

Alex: 40:43

Yeah. you are more, you are more right than you actually, even know because, whe if you really got, I mean the, going a little bit off the deep end here, but when you, if you really understand what's going on here, like, the. The parallels between individuals and companies from a strategy point of view are 100%. They map 100%. And the reason for that is that all that you are ever doing with any of this stuff is that, like you are talking about systems and then you're talking about nodes within the system, and good strategy is essentially about the node finding its place within. The system. Now, that node could be a business in a marketplace, or that node could be an employee within a company, or frankly, that node could be being, taking it to an extreme. You know, that node could be like an organ within your body. And what we're basically doing. Is that like, you know, the liver has its job and the heart has its job and you would be pretty bloody stupid if you try. If you said to the liver, I really need you to work on your heart's competencies, right? Like not only would it do a crap job and hurt the body, it would also stop doing the job of a liver. So well, and then the whole system would start to sort of like degrade. Well. It's the same thing within an organization. And then it's the same thing within a market. And the whole game is all one thing. And once you see it in one place, you can then map it anywhere you want. And then basically you've mastered strategy in a kind of truly holistic set.

Mike: 42:22

This is amazing, Alex, this is so important for leaders and I'm learning a ton. in starting to kinda. Bring this home. Talk a little bit in, in addition to your book, which everybody needs to go read, and we'll have a link in the show notes, but, how do you work with clients? Is it, do you get out there and do public speaking and that's how you add value? Do you get in there and do consultants and actually help clients build these strategies? what does your business look like and how do you add value?

Alex: 42:55

Well, I mean, yeah, in terms of my sort of product set, it is, yeah, I do, I do speaking. and then my main bread and butter is just, you know, going into the client and, you know, doing the strategy and then helping them, and then helping them implement the strategy. that's the. That's the real sort of like, that's the real crux of it. But you know, I mean, my own business is, an example of these principles whereby if you think about like. What is the industry that I occupy? it's, you know, call it the sort of the strategy consulting industry, which is obviously, you know, which runs the gamut from McKinsey down to individual solo consultants, whatever. But, you know, it is a industry. So then in order for me to get traction within that industry, I obviously need to offer this form of like new value within that industry. and so in. In my case, like the main sort of, you know, I don't necessarily communicate it this way in my marketing stuff, that's a kind of different thing. But if we were to break it down internally, obviously what we're talking about is we are taking this, this discipline and we are sort of. Fixing some of the issues that the market perceives that exist in it, which are complexity. So making it much more simple, and sort of speed and directness, making it sort of, you know, getting to the point much quicker. And then also, it bringing in a sense of, what's the right word, sort of. Inspiration and dare I say, sort of romance to it. Because with strategy, 50% of the battle is deciding what to do, what the strategy is, and then 50% of the battle is actually getting people to do it, which basically means making it sufficiently sexy and charismatic and exciting that people remember it and attack it. And you can do the best strategy in the world, but if you don't do that side of things, it's just gonna fall flat. This is one big issue with. With the space. So like, so this is kind of like the new value that I bring to this industry. And also, I just want to reemphasize, I wanna point out that I have to sacrifice a lot of things. I have to be bad at a lot of things in order to do that, in order to do this. So, for example, I am probably in the entire strategic universe. I am very confident in saying I am by far the least rigorous provider. Out of anybody. The amount of research and, analytics and all that type of stuff that I do in my work is borderline zero. And I'm not saying that isn't important. What I'm saying is that it is incompatible with my approach and the customer that need to decide what sort of approach they want to take to this. And if somebody wants to take a more rigor focused. Quote unquote scientific approach to strategy, then that's awesome. And I don't think that's wrong. I am not better than those providers. It's just a different set of values within the industry. But I can't do that and also do what I do. So do you see how even on my sort of like solopreneur level, we are seeing the same patterns here And then I think the evidence. That I then create new value, obviously comes in the traction that I've managed to get on like LinkedIn and that kind of thing. So I get sort of like more attention, let's say, than 99% of other providers in this industry because I have actually swallowed my own medicine, let's say, and I'm actually playing the game. So you see what Nintendo are doing on a massive scale. a one man band like me can also do, anyone can do it. The patterns are the same.

Mike: 46:30

So everybody needs to read the book. No bullsh*t strategy, but Alex, where should people go if they want to find out more about you and your work and how you could help them? Where's the best place for people to go?

Alex: 46:42

I've made a, I've made a little, sort of landing page specifically for people from podcasts where I've gathered together a whole bunch of resources. So this is a basic arts, ARTS basicarts.org/welcome. If you go there, you, You could see, you can get my book. You can. There are some free tools and resources there, like a strategy template that you can fill in for your business that will give you a pretty good idea of what you need to work on and how close you are to having this. You can subscribe to the newsletter, you can check out the YouTube channel, so everything you need, basicarts.org/welcome.

Mike: 47:25

I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Strategy is such an important piece of that. So Alex, thanks for helping us get there today.

Alex: 47:36

Thanks, Mike. I enjoyed that.