Strategic Thinking: Seeing Further, Choosing Better

By the end

What you'll build

• Distinguish goals, objectives, strategy and tactics, and identify which of the four is missing from a proposal
• Write a diagnosis that names an obstacle as a mechanism, states a checkable prediction, and admits what you have not checked
• Apply the refusal test to any document claiming to be a strategy, and name what it forbids
• Describe a recurring problem as a system of stocks, flows, feedback loops and delays, without blaming an individual
• Trace second-order consequences three steps out and run a pre-mortem that produces early warning signs with owners
• Separate claim from evidence, name the load-bearing assumption in a plan, and state the cost of checking it
• Steelman the strongest case against your own position and respond by conceding, mitigating or accepting risk explicitly
• Build a reference class from comparable past cases and correct an optimistic estimate using base rates
• Sort decisions by reversibility, match the depth of process to the stakes, and convert an irreversible decision into a reversible one
• Write a one-page strategy containing a diagnosis, named refusals with their costs, and a review trigger with a date and an owner

Curriculum

What's inside

7 modules · 48 lessons

1. 01

   Strategy Is Choice

   7 lessons
   • Start Here: What This Course Is and Is Not
   • A Plan Is Not a Strategy
   • Goals, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics: Four Words, One Confusion
   • Sorting the Four Levelsfill blank
   • Deck: The Vocabulary of Choiceflashcard sr
   • + 2 more lessons
2. 02

   Diagnosis Before Prescription

   7 lessons
   • Diagnosis: Naming What Is Actually in the Way
   • The Three-Part Kernel: Diagnosis, Guiding Approach, Coherent Action
   • Four Ways a Strategy Document Goes Hollow
   • Check: Symptom, Cause or Prescription?quiz
   • Lab: The Diagnosis Interviewinterview lab
   • + 2 more lessons
3. 03

   Systems: Stocks, Flows, Loops and Delay

   7 lessons
   • Stocks and Flows: The Shape of a Problem
   • Feedback Loops: Reinforcing and Balancing
   • Delay, and Why Obvious Fixes Backfire
   • Deck: Systems Vocabularyflashcard sr
   • Check: Reading a Systemquiz
   • + 2 more lessons
4. 04

   Critical Thinking Mechanics

   6 lessons
   • Separating Claim From Evidence
   • Finding the Load-Bearing Assumption
   • Steelmanning: Building the Best Case Against Yourself
   • Check: Claim, Evidence, Assumptionquiz
   • The Language of Careful Argumentword power
   • + 1 more lesson
5. 05

   Second-Order Consequences, Pre-Mortems and Traps

   7 lessons
   • And Then What? Second-Order Consequences
   • The Pre-Mortem: Failing on Paper First
   • Four Traps in Strategic Work
   • Check: Spot the Trapquiz
   • Everyday Idioms for Traps and Systemsmetaphor idiom
   • + 2 more lessons
6. 06

   Forecasting, Horizons and Deciding Under Uncertainty

   8 lessons
   • Base Rates and the Outside View
   • Inside View, Outside Viewfill blank
   • Time Horizons, Genuine Uncertainty and Light Scenario Planning
   • Reversible or Irreversible: Matching Rigour to Stakes
   • Check: Forecasting, Horizons and Reversibilityquiz
   • + 3 more lessons
7. 07

   Capstone: The One-Page Strategy

   6 lessons
   • Prioritising When Everything Is Urgent, and What Belongs on One Page
   • Template: Your One-Page Strategyspeech template
   • Communicating Strategy So It Survives Being Repeated
   • Lab: The Two-Minute Decision Briefpresence lab
   • Say It in Ninety Secondsspeech practice
   • + 1 more lesson

The shape of it

How this course works