Lifechanging Book: This is Strategy, by Seth Godin

Favorite Takeaways:

• The only reason to launch a project is to change something, and I want to know what you’re going to do and what impact it’s going to have.

• People don’t do things because you want them to. They change because they want to. Our job is to create the conditions for the ones we want to work with to make a choice that aligns with the change we seek to make.

• Culture defeats tactics every time, which is why strategy is often about creating culture.

• The choices we make today to make tomorrow better are our strategy.

• It’s easier to help someone get where they’re going than it is to persuade them to go somewhere else.

• When we see who benefits from the persistence of the system, we’ve identified the people who will work to maintain it.

• Culture defeats tactics, every time, and culture is the most resilient component of a system.

• Successful positioning strategies work because they have empathy for people, not because they represent a universal sort of better.

• Constraints are a gift because they bring us something to lean against, and they give us the chance to focus. The most interesting strategies happen at the edges, and the edges exist because that’s where the constraints are.

• Celebrate the problems ahead. Problems are opportunities to create the conditions for better outcomes.

• Avoid trying to control elements that can’t possibly be changed.

• In the long run, doing work that’s important leads to more happiness than doing work that’s merely profitable.