What is the starting point for creating a strategy story?
In my last article, I talked about “What is a good strategy? I mentioned that a good strategy is a story, and among them, competitive strategy in management is a story of making a difference and connecting.
However, this is still macroscopic, consequential, and integral, and in order to be able to create strategies, we need to clarify the more microscopic, causal, and differential internal sensation. This is because we have not yet answered how to create a strategy story.
In this article, I would like to focus on the starting point for creating a strategy story.
A good strategy starts with individual subjective truth
To conclude first, the starting point for creating a strategy story is subjective truth of individuals. Subjective truth is one of my most important keywords, meaning “the ideal that makes life worth living for oneself, a purpose for living that is unique to oneself.”
The point is the “for oneself” part, which is different from objective truth that is right for everyone. It is a strong desire to “be this way,” “be that way,” or “ to see the world this way,” and it is accompanied by an energy that seems to overflow from within oneself. If you want to know more, please refer to the following article.
The starting point of a “good strategy” is always a strong personal will. This may sound like an obvious point. However, there are many situations today where people start thinking about strategy from a desk, that is, from objective facts and analysis.
This is not to say that objective facts and analysis are not necessary. There are situations where they can be useful in the emergence of a strategy story.
What I would like to say is that objective facts and analysis cannot be the “starting point” for creating a strategy story. “The starting point for a good strategy should be the ideals and strong feelings of individuals, such as “I want to do this” and “I should do that.”
In my own case, the starting point of the story that led me to start my own business was my own subjective truth. At that time, it was not as verbalized as it is today, and the theme was vague: “It would be nice if the world could become a place where people could live vibrantly,” but the energy inside was like the magma of an active volcano.
I’m not talking about whether or not it is clearly verbalized, but whether or not there is a sense of inner energy pouring out. And this inner energy is always connected to the subjective truth of the person. A good strategy cannot be realized without the inner energy that comes from this connection with the subjective truth.
The starting point for creating a strategy story is the inner energy that springs from the connection with subjective truth of individuals.
Unleash our inner energy
Once we are able to connect with the subjective truth, we feel energized from the bottom of our heart. It’s almost as if we can forget eating and sleeping and use our energy for that thing. This is a state where our intuition, thoughts, feelings, and five senses are in alignment (no inconsistencies) and our inner energy is flowing.
Everyone has a subjective truth. Some people may ask, what is the difference between the inner energy that comes from the subjective truth and the one that does not?
The difference is not in the subjective truth itself, but in whether the intuition, thoughts, feelings, and five senses are aligned in such a way that the energy that comes from the subjective truth naturally emerges, or whether the energy is blocked somewhere due to a discrepancy between them.
To be more specific, the energy that comes from the subjective truth can be blocked by “thoughts” such as “I have to do XX instead of pursuing what I want to be” and the accompanying “feelings” of fear and anxiety, which are in conflict with the intuition of feeling connected to the subjective truth.
It is not wrong to have such thoughts and feelings, but it is unfortunate that such thoughts and feelings can cause us to lose our connection to the subjective truth.
The starting point for creating a good strategy is to value the connection with the subjective truth and feel our inner energy, even if we have these thoughts and feelings.
The starting point is the inner energy that comes from the connection with subjective truth
I imagine that Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, had a personal and heartfelt desire to create a place where people could relax and unwind, and that he was able to create the Starbucks strategy because he was pure in his desire. If so, then this desire is the subjective truth, the inner energy.
I don’t think it would have been possible to conceive and realize Starbucks using the coffee market analysis and competitive research as a “starting point” at that time. (Of course, there are times when this kind of research is useful in the process of growth.)
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, also had this to say.
“We continue to aspire to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, and we recognize this to be no small or easy challenge. We know there is much we can do better, and we find tremendous energy in the many challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.” — Jeff Bezos
Here, I feel the will and energy of Jeff Bezos to overcome the conflicting problems he faces in realizing his ideas, which come from his subjective truth. I think we can say that this desire and energy is the starting point for the creation of good strategies.
In this article, I mentioned that the starting point for creating a good strategy is the inner energy that comes from the connection with subjective truth. In the next article, I would like to talk about the overall steps of strategy story evolution.
Here are the quests of the day. (If you’d like, please share your thoughts in the comments.)
・What examples, if any, do you know of where subjective truth has led to good strategy?
・In that case, what kind of subjective truth is assumed to lead to good strategy development?
Bunshiro Ochiai
