Art of Strategy

This the practical insights from book The Art of Strategy by Erik Schön.

Erik took 3 ideas (Art of War, OODA Loop, and Wardley Maps) and wrapped them together to create a new mechanism for building and managing a strategy. In this page I will describes the mental model of this mechanism and I will also conclude with alternatives or suggestions for modifying it.

1. Mental Model of the mechanism

Purpose: create and maintain successful strategy.

How? develop the strategy using The Art of War, make choices using OODA Loops, and deploy the strategy using Wardley Maps.

The Art of War

OODA Loops

Wardley Maps

2. Suggestions

I have a few questions regarding this mechanism. Is there a way to measure the it's effectiveness? Can we replace or add an idea/component to make it more effective?

Here are a few ideas I plan to explore:

• Identify your biggest challenge that can be solved. That's strategy - Richard Rumelt
• Allocate resources toward emerging strategies - Rita Gunther McGrath. I am thinking of calling this 'strategy spikes'.
• Increase the number of leaders in your organization via creating small groups, visible P&L, foster leaders without formal authority - Gary Hamel. I am thinking of calling this 'democratizing leadership'.

3. Other resources

17 min interview with the author, Erik Schön: