Strategy Quest: The Executive Guide to Finding Business Opportunities

By Paul A Sacco

Are you a business executive in need of strategic opportunities? Using an entirely new method, Strategy Quest will guide you every step of the way. With Strategy Quest you will learn to set strategic goals, create an original vision, and judge whether it represents a strategic opportunity.

Stop copying your competitors or following trends. The only way to beat the competition is to find unique strategic opportunities. Get started on your Strategy Quest today. Combining knowledge from leadership, business, strategy, psychology, philosophy, art, neuroscience and history, Strategy Quest will pave your way to competitive success. Whether your business is B2C or B2B and your customers are internal or external, Strategy Quest will help your business win!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jun 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228808459

Paul A Sacco

As President of Propheta Lucro Management Consultants, Paul specializes in helping leaders find strategic opportunities. One of the world's top experts in strategic thinking, Paul has over 35 years of experience managing and leading businesses. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto holding both a B.A. Sc. in Chemical Engineering and an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.Paul is available to speak about business strategy or to teach, coach or facilitate the Strategy Quest method. For more information visit our web-site at:www.prophetalucro.comOr contact Paul at:Email: [e-mail]: 1-877-214-0036

Book preview

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STRATEGY

QUEST

The Executive Guide to Finding Business Opportunities

PAUL A. SACCO

Strategy Quest

Copyright © 2020 by Paul A. Sacco

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-0846-6 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-0843-5 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-0845-9 (eBook)

This book is dedicated to Juli.

I could not have completed

my Strategy Quest

without her support.

Table of Contents

My Strategy Quest

Introduction

Part One - Understanding the Strategic Mindset

The Strategic Mindset

Strategy and the Strategic Mindset

The Need for the Strategic Mindset

Management and Leadership

The Strategic Mindset & Myers-Briggs Type

Business Types

Understanding the Letters in a Type

The Perceiving Functions

The Deciding Functions

The Dominant and Auxiliary Functions

The Eight Functions

Functional Dynamics of the Business Types

The INTJ Mindset (Ni, Te)

The ENTP Mindset (Ne, Ti)

The ENTJ Mindset (Te, Ni)

The ESTJ Mindset (Te, Si)

The ISTJ Mindset (Si, Te)

Positioning the Strategic Mindset

The Mindset Continuum

Part Two - The Strategy Quest Method

The Strategy Quest Method

Your Motivation Quest

Strategic Feelings (FiS)

I Am Responsible for Finding Strategic Opportunities

I Must Fulfill the Needs of Long-Term Investors

My Business Must Better Fulfill Customer Needs

I Must Act Proactively

Nonstrategic Feelings (Fi)

Strategy Is About Defeating Competitors

Strategic Opportunities Must Be Proven

We Can Rely on Our Fixed Vision Statement

Your Quest for Strategic Goals

Establishing Needs-Based Goals

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The Seven Needs Clusters

Well-Being

Versatility

Access

Pleasure

Effectiveness

Quality

Psychology

Categories of Needs

Understand Customer Needs

How to Understand Needs

Establish Your Strategic Goals

Keep Your Strategic Goals Secret

Your Vision Quest

Explore

Memorize

Consolidate

Incubate

Ideate

Envision

Vision Quest Struggles

Creative Confidence

The Passive Vision Myth

Short-Term Focus

Going It Alone

Inhibition

Persistence

Fear

Keep Your Visions Secret

Your Concept Quest

The Puzzle Pieces

Your Reality Quest

Strategic Thinking

Biases

The Availability Heuristic

The Expert Bias

The Tunnel Vision Bias

Confirmation Bias

Stereotyping Bias

The Bandwagon Effect

Emotional Bias

Critical Thinking

How to Think Critically

Determining If Your Concept Is Possible

Ensuring That Your Concept Is Complete

Checking Needs Fulfillment

Checking Your Business Model

Stochastic Analysis

Decision Quest

Evaluation Factors

The End of This Strategy Quest

Works Cited

List of Figures

Figure 1 - Functions of the Business Types

Figure 2 - MBTI® Step II Functional Subscales

Figure 3 - The Mindset Continuum

Figure 4 - Mindset Changes on the Continuum

Figure 5 - The Red-Line Problem

Figure 6 - Business Types on the Mindset Continuum

Figure 7 - Functions over the INTJ Mindset Range

Figure 8 - The ISTJ Mindset Shift

Figure 9 - United Airlines Tactical Response

Figure 10 - The Strategy Quest Method

Figure 11 - The Business Life Cycle

Figure 12 - LeaderCo Versus LaggardCo

Figure 13 - Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Figure 14 - The Seven Needs Clusters

Figure 15 - Book Industry Needs Mind Map

Figure 16 - Starbucks Needs Mind Map

Figure 17 - The Vision Quest Method

Figure 18 - Amazon Prime Air Balance of Needs

Figure 19 - The Business Model Canvas

Figure 20 - Amazon Business Model with Prime Air

Figure 21 - NPV Probability Distribution

Figure 22 - The Opportunity Evaluation Matrix

My Strategy Quest

Everything you possess of skill, and wealth, and handicraft, wasn’t it first merely a thought and a quest?

—Rumi Jalalu’l-Din

I wrote Strategy Quest because I believe that the current approach toward business strategy doesn’t work. It seems that, despite hiring the best graduates from the best MBA programs, businesses are having more difficulty than ever finding truly strategic opportunities. Instead, executives either follow business trends or the successful initiative of others. Business strategy is supposed to be a means for getting ahead of competitors, and this is unlikely to happen when executives are chasing the same opportunities.

After entering the corporate world, I recognized that I was different from my colleagues. I seemed to have a unique drive and ability to create ideas for changing the status quo. It perplexed me that few of my very intelligent colleagues were not doing the same−despite that our employer was incentivizing us to do so.

Then I completed the Myers-Briggs personality assessment and learned that I am an INTJ, and only 2% of the population has this strategic personality type. Although this discovery explained my interest in strategy and the difference between my colleagues and me, it seemed futile for my employer to try to motivate people to be strategic when it wasn’t in their nature.

Later in my career, I decided to pursue an MBA. I was particularly excited about taking courses in strategy. However, I found that the course material didn’t fit with my mindset. I had always considered that coming up with an original winning idea was paramount to strategy, yet, the courses didn’t instruct us on how to do this. It seemed that rather than learning to create winning ideas, we were, in effect, learning to choose from amongst the latest business trends.

Five years after completing my MBA, I incorporated Propheta Lucro Management Consultants. I eventually decided to focus on helping executives find truly unique strategic opportunities so that their business could gain ground or distance on competitors. My goal was to undertake a quest to articulate the workings of the strategic mind.

I began my strategy quest by looking back at my life to determine how my interest in strategy began. I remember that, as a kid, I would create ideas in an attempt to win whatever game or sport I was playing. My goal was to outsmart my friends and family. Whether or not I won, my serious determination always amused my brother.

A quest is an arduous journey in search of something serving a larger purpose. The word quest seems to describe the effort required to find truly strategic opportunities. Quest is derived from the Latin word quaerere, which means to ask or to seek. Quaerere is also the root of the word question. In seeking ways to improve the competitive position of their business, the strategic leader’s role is to question the status quo.

I hadn’t anticipated that it would take two years, and as with any quest, there were points when I felt like giving up, but I couldn’t−transforming the strategic status quo seems to have become my life’s purpose and helping executives learn to find strategic opportunities has become my life’s mission. I believe that Strategy Quest presents an entirely new and unique means for finding and selecting truly strategic opportunities.

Introduction

Every quest takes place in both the sphere of the actual, which is what maps reveal to us, and in the sphere of the symbolic, for which the only maps are the unseen ones in our heads.

―Salman Rushdie

Strategy Quest is about how to find and select strategic opportunities. However, it is also a tale of two businesses―Sears and Amazon. Sears represents a cautionary tale of leadership failure and Amazon, a celebratory tale of leadership success. During Sears’ downfall, Amazon became the third-largest business in the world. The difference in the outcomes of these two businesses is strategic leadership−Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has it, and Sears’ Eddie Lambert doesn’t.

Since Sears was the Amazon of their time, it is quite ironic that they were failing while Amazon was growing. In 1993, Sears ended its 100-year-old mail-order catalog sales channel. The following year, Jeff Bezos recognized that the practical size of a mail-order catalog limited the number of books offered for purchase via this channel. He started Amazon.com by offering over three million book titles for sale via the Internet—a quantity which, according to Bezos, would have required a stack of catalogs three feet high.

With their extensive mail-order experience, pioneering e-commerce seemed like a natural fit as a strategic opportunity for Sears. After all, they knew how to distribute remotely ordered merchandise and only needed to switch their sales channel from mail-order to the Internet. Yet, Sears failed to create this strategic future, and in a matter of years, despite having no retail experience, Jeff Bezos built an e-commerce business having a tremendous strategic advantage over it.

If a naturally tactical executive is going to succeed in their strategic leadership role, they must develop a strategic mindset. If a board of directors is going to choose a successful CEO, they too must understand the two mindsets. Despite that the strategic and tactical mindsets are dichotomous, many people find themselves in executive roles as a result of their tactical abilities.

Part One of Strategy Quest discusses the strategic mindset and how personality type influences our ability to achieve this state. Part Two is about finding your strategic mindset using the Strategy Quest Method.

I offer you my sincerest best wishes in your quest to become a successful strategic leader. Doing so is the only way to ensure that your business gains ground and distance on competitors by finding the best strategic opportunities.

Part One

Understanding the Strategic Mindset

Creating organizations that value a growth mindset can create contexts in which more people grow into the knowledgeable, visionary, and responsible leaders we need.

—Carol S. Dweck

The Strategic Mindset

Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change along with it.

—Steve Maraboli

The strategic mindset possesses the ability to create an authentic vision and determine whether it is a strategic opportunity that is right for your business. The strategic mindset exists in two different modes. The first is called strategic intuition, and the second is called strategic thinking.

Strategic intuition is creative intuition directed toward achieving a strategic goal, and it results in strategic visions and concepts. Strategic thinking determines if a concept, created from a vision, is both a strategic opportunity and is the right choice for your business. As will be explained, strategic thinking is different from other forms of convergent thinking.

Strategy and the Strategic Mindset

One can’t achieve a strategic mindset without understanding strategy. Michael Porter’s description of strategy reads, Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value (1). Every strategy course presents Porter’s description, yet, they fail to teach their students how to create a unique mix of value. It takes strategic intuition to create a different set of activities (i.e., a concept) and strategic thinking to understand if these activities are realistic and create enough value