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Another in a series of special reports
on the power of strategy from Jay Abraham…
“
Strategy’s Biggest Secret”
“Super-Strategists” Jay Abraham
and Paul Lemberg on Strategy
and Its Profit and Business
Growth Implications on
YOUR
Business.
© 2003 The Abraham Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Strategy’s Biggest Secret
[Jay’s Note: In February of this year, as part of my immersion into the different
perspectives regarding strategy and it’s implication on your business, I recently met with
Paul Lemberg, a leading edge entrepreneurial strategist focusing on providing strategic
coaching and facilitation to lots of forward thinking “silicon valley” clientele.
Paul’s strategic wisdom and knowledge is clearly evident by reading part one of this
thoughtful and provocative transcript. Right after I met with him, I felt his insights were
so illuminating I recruited him to provide private one-on-one strategic implementation
coaching for the 50 companies participating in my Strategy Setting Super Summit.
I believe he’s one of only a handful of strategic thinkers out there who
really know how to take strategy and turn it into actionable bottom line
driver. Stated differently, he’s not theoretical.
Special Introductory Note:
In my most reasoned and probably best experienced
assessment, I think that the single most important lever point and business enhancement
factor any organization large or small has available to it in today’s competitive
environment to dramatically change for the better the course of events, the size of their
growth, the amount of profit, revenue and competitive supremacy they achieve
is to
change the strategy they follow
.
I think that the vast majority of the companies out there--- most of them aren’t strategic
at all. They’re tactical. And the ones that are strategic use weak and under performing
sub optimal strategies that give them a fraction of the outcome they could.
But the fastest way, I think, you personally can transform and increase the result of your
business is to change the strategy. And I believe a brilliant strategy modestly executed
will hands-down outperform a stupid strategy brilliantly executed.
Please read this transcript in its entirety. I intentionally kept it under 10 pages so that
you can easily assimilate Paul’s powerful message and act upon it. - Jay]
Paul: This is supposed to be you sort of interviewing me, but I’m going to start by
asking you to define as succinctly as possible what you think you mean by
strategy.
Jay: Well, to me…
Strategy to me is the overarching, guiding force
that the whole business is constantly moving
through and to. It’s the definition not just of
your business model or your business purpose
but what your purpose is trying to do and why---
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Strategy’s Biggest Secret
and what mechanisms it’s trying to do it for and
what it’s supposed to look like at the end.
And I don’t mean when you sell it, or retire or when go bankrupt but
when you
get to the point of being in the zone, like in concert pitch.
It’s like the
overriding, it’s the overriding command position that defines, drives, aligns,
controls and adjust monitors everything else the business does. I’m not saying it
very clearly.
So how do
you
define it?
Paul: Ok, It’s my turn.
Strategy is the choices you make about how to
deploy your resources, and the choices you
make about tactics – which tactics to select, and
how you use them to achieve your overriding
end.
That’s it.
So in other words, to me, there’s a cascade of ideas.
And you start
with a vision.
So you have a vision of where you want your business to go. And
people really try to define what the heck a vision is. To me, it’s very simple,
a
vision is how you want your business to be in the future.
So you can add all sorts
of things on top that.
From an operational standpoint
a vision is the
decision you make about how you want your
business to be in the future.
And how you achieve that vision is your strategy
. Now some people say, “Well, I
don’t really have a strategy. I’m just going to take advantage of opportunities as
they arise.”
And the biggest distinction, I think, is not
between strategy and tactics, but between
strategy and opportunism. Now……
Jay: That’s quite interesting. Explain and define what you think the differences are.
Paul: Opportunism is just that. An opportunity presents itself. Circumstances arise and
there’s something there and a great client, a great potential client gets in touch
with you. And you serve them. So there wasn’t anything very strategic about
that. That’s the simplest case. An opportunity arises. Or perhaps somebody
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 Strategy’s Biggest Secret
approaches you about a joint venture opportunity and you say, “Hey, this is cool.
Let’s do that.”
So unless your strategy is one to hang your hat out there and say,
“I’ll look at
joint venture opportunities as they arise.”
That might have been your strategy.
But if that wasn’t your strategy --- someone comes along, it’s a joint venture
opportunity, it not necessarily within your scope or purview but you say, “Hey,
this sounds “hot.” I’ll do that.
That’s not strategic. That’s opportunistic.
Jay: Yes. But you’re saying opportunistic could be, also, an element of your strategy.
Paul: Well, your strategy could be opportunistic strategy.
Jay: Yeah. It could be,
“We’re going to take advantage of every opportunistic joint
venture or alliance we can do as part of our business initi….
Paul: I call it the
“trawling strategy”
. The trawling strategy, which is you drag yourself
through the ocean. You drag your net through the ocean and then you pull it in.
You hang out your shingle. You do advertise . You run a seminar. You publish
an e-zine. You put up a website. These are all trawling strategies. Or trawling
tactics. Right? And you say clearly, “my strategy is trawling.” I’m going to put
my name out there. Allow people to mill around it. Give people an idea of what
it is that I do and if people think I’m interesting they’ll come to me. Then you can
evaluate them and decide if you want their business
However, that’s not most people’s strategy.
Most people’s strategy is they’re
doing “something else” and an opportunity arises. And they look at it and
they go, “Oh, well that might be interesting.
And they do it.
Jay: That is a tactical action.
Paul: It’s a tactical action and it’s not strategic.
Being strategic requires you have a mission. There’s something important you’re
trying to accomplish in the larger sense of things. And your strategy from the get-
go is saying, “What are my best opportunities to achieve this end?”
All strategy arises out of that one question, which is:
What are my best
opportunities to achieve this important, significant end?
From there you begin to
set things in motion to achieve those ends.
Jay: Let me ask you a question. You’ve operated for years as a strategist. The
clientele you deal with are entrepreneurial but a lot of them are high-tech and let’s
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 Strategy’s Biggest Secret
say, fast-paced, very competitive based enterprises. How many different forms of
strategy have you uncovered? Do you think there’s an infinite number or do you
think there’s twenty, thirty, ten, one? Give me like your genesis. What you think
for people who don’t even have a clue of how to get their arms around this, which
is probably about everybody.
Help me help, whether I transcribe it, whether it’s a tape, whether it’s both --- the
people being exposed to the ideas in this get the best understanding of how to go
from wherever they are, which I’m going to submit by-and-large is going to be
more tactical, you may disagree, to the most sophisticated strategy they are
capable of evolving.
And, again, we’re not going to do it in one or two interviews but I want to give
them some insight. I want to give them some pitfalls. I want to give them some
examples. I want to give them some components. I want to ask you some more
questions.
Paul: So let’s start where I think you have to start.
Jay: So where do we start?
Paul: So you have a …….you didn’t finish the sentence, but I know which question the
sentence is:
How to get from where you are to
where you want to be?
Jay: Yes.
Paul: Tome,
this is
the
fundamental strategic question
. Your future depends on you
addressing it directly.
Jay: And knowing what it is and where it is you do want to be.
Paul: Yes. A moment ago you asked me how many strategies there are. And I said I
thought it was the wrong question. The taxonomy of strategy is personally
interesting to me and I’m working on defining one in my new book. But it’s not,
I think, the fundamental question for an entrepreneur.
Jay: The entrepreneur’s question should be what?
Paul: The entrepreneur’s question --- the #1 entrepreneurial question is:
Where do I
want to go?
There is a great, and often mis-used quote from Clausewitz:
“War
is the continuation of politics by another means”
People use this to say whatever
they want. To entrepreneurs I think it means: The application of strategy is
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