Kedron Rhodes

I need to get something off my chest that’s been grinding on me for years: We’ve butchered the meaning of strategy.

Walk into any conference room during “strategic planning season” and you’ll find teams crafting beautiful slide decks full of mission statements, market analyses, and three-year roadmaps. They’ll spend weeks wordsmithing vision statements and building elaborate frameworks. Then they’ll wonder why nothing changes.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Strategy isn’t a plan. Strategy is choice. Choice is action.

I hear it constantly—“Strategy is nothing without execution.” Gag me. That statement reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what strategy actually is. Strategy isn’t something you execute; strategy is execution. It’s the pattern of choices you make when faced with trade-offs. It’s what you do when resources are scarce and options are many.

Plans are static documents. Strategy is dynamic behavior. Plans represent intention. Strategy represents reality. If you want to understand someone’s strategy, don’t look at their PowerPoint—watch what they do when they have to choose between two good options.

Getting good at strategy means getting good at influence. It’s about creating the conditions where people make the right choices, not the right plans. If you’re not winning, you need different actions, not better documentation. Do something different. Do something thoughtful and intentionally aligned to what winning looks like.

By all means, don’t confuse your plans with strategy.

Strategy Only Works if it Sticks 🍯

IDEO cuts straight to the heart of why most strategic initiatives fail: they never become part of the organization’s DNA. Drawing from their work with global companies, they identify three critical factors that separate successful strategy from boardroom theater. First, strategy must be felt throughout the organization—not just communicated down from leadership, but embedded in daily decisions and trade-offs. Second, it requires what they call “behavioral architecture”—the systems, incentives, and cultural norms that make strategic choices feel natural rather than forced. Finally, successful strategy creates its own momentum through quick wins that prove the approach works. The insight that resonates most: strategy doesn’t stick through repetition of messaging, but through repeated experience of success. When teams see their strategic choices producing better outcomes, the strategy becomes self-reinforcing rather than something imposed from above. (Dive Deeper into IDEO’s Framework →)

🪚 Strategic thinking to sharpen your advantage…

🎯 Organizational Strategy

• Crossing the Chasm… Inside Your Organisation — Geoffrey Moore’s technology adoption curve applies brilliantly to internal strategy communication. The gap between C-suite vision and frontline execution follows the exact same pattern as market adoption—early adopters get it immediately, but the pragmatic majority needs proof, peer validation, and clear implementation paths. The strategic implication? Stop treating strategy communication like broadcasting and start treating it like product launch.

• Distribution vs. Innovation | Andreessen Horowitz — a16z frames the eternal startup battle: will the startup get distribution before the incumbent gets innovation? Using TiVo as a cautionary tale, they show how revolutionary products fail when distribution advantages trump technological superiority. The strategic lesson for established companies: your innovation may be impressive, but someone else’s distribution network might render it irrelevant. Focus on reaching customers, not just creating better features.

🛠️ Product Strategy & Execution

• Design Is Moving to the Front of the Stack — As generative AI blurs the line between design and engineering, Rachel Kobetz argues that design thinking is becoming the primary competitive advantage. When anyone can generate code or create interfaces, the real value lies in asking the right questions, understanding user needs, and making strategic trade-offs about what to build. Design isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s becoming the strategic discipline that shapes product decisions before they become technical problems.

• 20 Lessons From 20 Different Paths to Product-Market Fit — First Round’s comprehensive analysis of PMF journeys reveals that successful companies don’t just stumble into market fit—they systematically test assumptions, iterate based on feedback, and make hard choices about what not to build. The pattern across all 20 stories? PMF comes through disciplined experimentation, not brilliant initial vision. Strategy emerges through doing, not planning.

• Is Your Startup Idea Any Good? Borrow These Validation Tactics — Beyond typical customer interviews and surveys, founders share unconventional validation methods that reveal true market demand. From Linear’s founder building internal tools first to Mercury’s team validating demand through content creation, these tactics share a common thread: they force entrepreneurs to act on their assumptions rather than just analyze them. Real validation comes through committed action, not research reports.

🎨 Innovation & Creativity

• Special Edition: A Look Back at 99 Issues of Thinking Things — The Mighty Minds Club celebrates 100 issues with a reflection on what drives consistent creative output. Their insight? Innovation doesn’t come from waiting for inspiration—it comes from systematic exploration of playful ideas. Like strategy, creativity is a practice of making choices and taking action, not waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect idea.

👋 Sign-Off

What actions are you taking to make your strategy stick? I’d love to hear what’s working for you. Hit reply and let me know.

The organizations I admire most don’t have the best strategic plans—they have the clearest strategic choices. They’ve figured out how to align resources, attention, and daily decisions around a few key trade-offs that create competitive advantage. Their strategy isn’t a document you read; it’s a pattern you observe.

That’s the kind of strategy that sticks. That’s the kind of strategy that wins.

Keep making the hard choices,

⁓ Kedron

P.S. For the last several years, Ilana and I have been perfecting a fruitcake recipe. We prefer a holiday fruitcake to be at least 3 months old, which means we’re aiming for October. Well, finding candied cherries that early in the year around here is tough! So this year I decided to candy some summer-fresh cherries. The process takes a solid week, but the results are amazing! Beyond how great they taste, compared to the bright red ones I get at the store, I didn’t realize I’d have a bunch of cherry syrup when I finished. Oh my, it is SO GOOD! Not sure what I’ll do with it just yet, but YUM! Turns out the best strategies—whether for fruitcake or business—often involve patient process improvement and delightful unexpected bonuses. 🍒