This Is Strategy

Make Better Plans (Create a Strategy to Elevate Your Career, Community & Life)

Seth Godin

• Publisher: Authors Equity
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9798893310306
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Skills
• Index: Business

A Best Non-Fiction Book of 2024 from The Next Big Idea Book Club and National Bestseller.

From Seth Godin, one of the world's most influential business thinkers and bestselling author of This is Marketing, comes an essential guide to thinking strategically in a complex, ever-changing world.

"With his signature clarity and brevity, the marketing maven presents memorable, practical advice for making smarter plans." —Adam Grant, author of Think Again

In this unique and thought-provoking book, Godin shares insights on strategy through a series of powerful reflections and observations that will reshape how you approach problems, make decisions, and create change.

“Creating tomorrow by repeating yesterday is not a useful way forward.”

“Every strategy requires choice. And those choices often involve saying ‘no’ to things we could do, but won’t do.”

“It’s not easy to persuade someone to want what you want. It’s much more productive to find people who already want to go where you’d like to take them.”

This is Strategy is a modern classic that offers perspectives you'll find yourself returning to again and again. Rather than providing step-by-step formulas, Godin offers something more valuable: a new way of seeing and thinking about the challenges you face.

You’ll discover how to:

• Identify your "smallest viable audience" and make remarkable work they can't ignore
• Understand and influence the systems shaping our world
• Prioritize long-term thinking over instant gratification
• Make smart, purposeful choices that shape a better tomorrow

Who this book is for:

• Leaders who want to think more deeply about their impact
• Entrepreneurs tired of conventional business advice
• Change-makers seeking lasting transformation in their career and community
• Anyone feeling stuck in outdated systems and looking for a fresh perspective

Strategy turns our effort into impact. Your journey to better thinking starts here.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of the Riffs
• Introduction
• 1. Strategy is a Philosophy of Becoming
• 2. Four Threads, Woven Together
• 3. What Do People Want?
• 4. The Non-Strategy of “Take What You Can Get”
• 5. Awaiting Instructions
• 6. The Elegant Path is the Most Useful Way Forward
• 7. Not All Elegant Strategies are the Same
• 8. Systems are Unseen and Persistent
• 9. We Live in the Solar System
• 10. Systems Deliver Value
• 11. The Buildings or the Roads?
• 12. The Unseen Assistant (and the Mysterious Vandal)
• 13. Can You See the River?
• 14. The Collective
• 15. Successful Systems
• 16. Real Life Isn’t Lego
• 17. Two Myths About Systems
• 18. Built, Natural, and Complex Systems
• 19. What Makes a System?
• 20. The Persistence of Systems
• 21. From Fine China to Underwater Headphones
• 22. Duncan Hines (and Nina Zagat)
• 23. All Dogs are Mixed Breed Dogs
• 24. U.S. News Changed College
• 25. Where’s the Meter?
• 26. Seeing (and Changing) the Chocolate System
• 27. Serious Games
• 28. There are Games in Every Strategy
• 29. We are All Time Travelers
• 30. Seeing Time
• 31. There is a Method
• 32. The Heartbreak of an Intuitive Strategy
• 33. Hiding from a Useful Strategy
• 34. Low-Hanging Fruit Isn’t
• 35. Rome Was Built in a Day
• 36. One Telephone is Worthless
• 37. The Desert Island Mythologies
• 38. Cities are Contagious
• 39. Analyzing the Last Move
• 40. Strategy and Tactics
• 41. Toward a Strategic Practice
• 42. Project Work is Different
• 43. You Might Need a Strategy To
• 44. Slithering, With Patience
• 45. Plants Make People Happy
• 46. Seat Belts Save Lives
• 47. Airbnb was Lost
• 48. Twenty-Seven Egg Dishes
• 49. Esther Changed the World
• 50. Shine a Light
• 51. Big Problems Demand Small Solutions
• 52. “Getting the Word Out” (Also Known as “Selfish Shouting”)
• 53. Use, Be Used, or Change It
• 54. Freedom is Possible
• 55. Getting Clear About the Business Model
• 56. And It Flies
• 57. Passion and Our Business Model
• 58. The Circle of Us and the Circle of Now
• 59. Selling Selfish
• 60. Next Guest, Best Guest
• 61. Seeing Strategy Clearly
• 62. A Blueprint is an Assertion
• 63. Sharing Your Strategy: The Modern Business Plan
• 64. Intuition is Strategy Without Narrative
• 65. The Thing About Effort
• 66. Resilience and Leverage
• 67. It Barely Works
• 68. The Minimum Viable Audience
• 69. And Then What Happens?
• 70. To Kill All the Whales
• 71. Not All Needs Have a Market (Yet).
• 72. Seeing the Windmill
• 73. Without a Strategy
• 74. Some Reasons We Avoid Having a Strategy
• 75. A Framework for a Strategy
• 76. Creating the Conditions for Change
• 77. Twelve Slogans
• 78. Unseen Systems and Unintended Consequences
• 79. We are Not Plankton
• 80. Strategic Marketing
• 81. No Time to Waste
• 82. Strategy and Aimlessness
• 83. “Should” Might Be a Trap
• 84. Where is the Blueprint?
• 85. Sooner or Later
• 86. Strategy is the Partner of Freedom
• 87. The Lottery is Not a Strategy
• 88. Nostalgia for the Future
• 89. Doing Our Job or Doing Our Work?
• 90. Tension First and Above All
• 91. The Fastest Cyclist in the World
• 92. When Did Apple Become Apple?
• 93. When Did Netflix Become Netflix?
• 94. When Did David Bowie Become David Bowie?
• 95. What’s Your Strategy?
• 96. What Does It Mean to Be a Strategic Thinker?
• 97. Tactics are Not Strategies
• 98. What’s a Feedback Loop?
• 99. Time Isn’t Free
• 100. Avoiding Hindsight Bias
• 101. Not the Parts, the System
• 102. Thinking About ‘Status’
• 103. Seeing Status in Hollywood
• 104. The Output of Systems
• 105. Our Intent is Altered by the System We’re Part of
• 106. The Birth of Afya
• 107. Perpetuating the Scam
• 108. Toxic Systems
• 109. The Urgency of “No”
• 110. On Being Judged
• 111. Choose Your Customers and Choose Your Future.
• 112. Choose Your Competition and Choose Your Future
• 113. Choose the Source of Validation and Choose Your Future
• 114. Choose Your Distribution and Choose Your Future
• 115. News, Ideas, and Distribution Changes
• 116. “Everyone” is Elusive
• 117. What Do You Want?
• 118. What Does It Want?
• 119. The Runaway Conditions
• 120. Things That Scale
• 121. Working for the System
• 122. Who is in Charge?
• 123. Snapshots and Movies
• 124. The Day I Met Derek Sivers
• 125. The Emperor Penguins, Crowds and Fear
• 126. If You Want to Start a Fire
• 127. The Five Steps to Widespread Change
• 128. Sand Hill Road
• 129. 100 is a Fine Way to Start
• 130. Failing to Change the Donation Dynamic
• 131. Shun the Non-Believers
• 132. Understanding Adopters
• 133. Time is the Overlooked Axis
• 134. Getting Comfortable With a Series of Snapshots
• 135. Embrace the Gulf of Disapproval
• 136. Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow Proves the Point
• 137. Chasing the Hype Cycle
• 138. Seeing the Chasm
• 139. The Need for Scaffolding
• 140. Scaffolding and Marketing
• 141. The Catch-22 of Leveraged Systems
• 142. Treating Different People Differently
• 143. Shifting to the Masses
• 144. Misunderstanding Quality
• 145. The Challenge in Finding Useful Criticism
• 146. Being Clear About “Better”
• 147. What We Ask Ourselves When It’s Our Turn on the Curve
• 148. Short-Term and Long-Term Games
• 149. Infinite or Finite?
• 150. Scarcity or Abundance?
• 151. Dominance or Affiliation?
• 152. Paying It Forward Vs. Paying It Back
• 153. Maintenance, Substitution, or Possibility?
• 154. Games of Skill, Luck and Privilege
• 155. Games With Divergent Objectives
• 156. Mutual Enrollment and Complex Games
• 157. Don’t Bet on Games You Can’t Win
• 158. All of Our Strategies are All of Our Strategies
• 159. Grabbing the Last Doughnut
• 160. Systems Thrive, and Then They Don’t
• 161. To Get to New York
• 162. If It Fits, You Can Ship It
• 163. Feeding the System
• 164. Scarcity and the Drivers of a System
• 165. Scale and Magic
• 166. How NPR Lost to the Podcast
• 167. Self-Interest is Self-Evident
• 168. It’s Easy to Avoid the Most Important Part of Our Job
• 169. It’s Voluntary
• 170. “I Will If You Will”
• 171. Bringing Strategy to Marketing
• 172. Living in a Van
• 173. Acorns Sometimes Become Oak Trees
• 174. Systems Have Multiple Objectives
• 175. One Way to Solve the Problem is to Change the System
• 176. Interoperability
• 177. What Does the System Respond To?
• 178. The Paradox of Substitutes and Uniqueness
• 179. Commodities
• 180. Understanding Genre
• 181. Medium Vs. Message
• 182. Thoughts on Pricing
• 183. Strategies Require Empathy
• 184. Dorothy and Her Crew
• 185. Everyone is Always Right
• 186. All Persistent Systems Rely on Feedback Loops
• 187. The Wildcard in Every Feedback Loop is the Delay
• 188. Systems + Games + Feedback Loops
• 189. Embracing Constraints
• 190. Who Benefits?
• 191. Six System Traps
• 192. The Moses Manipulations
• 193. Resilient Systems Stick Around
• 194. Trying to Turn Me Into an Addict
• 195. The Challenge of False Proxies
• 196. We See Systems When They are Forced to Change
• 197. May I See the Org Chart?
• 198. The Agent of Change
• 199. Looking for the Agent of Change
• 200. The Telegraph and the Skyscraper
• 201. Cheese Bullies
• 202. A Brief History of Jaywalking
• 203. What Will I Tell the Others?
• 204. Who Says Yes?
• 205. If You Want to Use the System
• 206. The Person in Front of You is Part of a System
• 207. Some of the Ways That Systems Operate
• 208. Types of Elegant Strategies
• 209. Bringing Change to a System
• 210. Luck Doesn’t Even Out in the Long Run
• 211. Leverage and the Exaggeration of Strategies
• 212. Intent and Side Effects
• 213. Turbulence and Systems Transformation
• 214. Gatekeepers
• 215. Kinds of Tension
• 216. “What Will I Tell the Others?”
• 217. Two Tesla Parables: Ludicrous and the Clown Car
• 218. Competitive Advantage
• 219. Metcalfe’s Law is Waiting for You
• 220. The First Rule. . .
• 221. Do Vs. Want
• 222. Exchanging the System is Tempting
• 223. Revolutions are Rare
• 224. The Game Belongs to the Children Who Play It
• 225. The Two Unseen Desires
• 226. The Thing About Cheaper
• 227. Compounding Our Tribal Instincts
• 228. Substitutes and the Race to the Bottom
• 229. Seeking the Invisible Hand
• 230. Examples of Systems Living in Tension
• 231. Which Hat?
• 232. The Weather Report is a Prediction
• 233. This Might Not Work
• 234. Back to the Rhino
• 235. Who Controls the Dice?
• 236. Who is Waiting for You at the Airport?
• 237. Understanding Statistics and Polls
• 238. Best Practices and the Status Quo
• 239. Analogies and the Problem With “Almost”
• 240. Cheerleaders and Coaches
• 241. Collapsing to the Center
• 242. Understanding the 2 x 2 Positioning Grid
• 243. The Blank of Blank
• 244. Moving to the Middle (or Not)
• 245. Going to Places the Competition Can’t Go or Won’t Go
• 246. Where is Everyone?
• 247. Getting the Word Out
• 248. Scaling Better
• 249. Half a Boat Isn’t Much Help
• 250. Thrashing at the Start
• 251. The Last Minute
• 252. Every Yes Requires Many No’s
• 253. Empathy for the Retailer
• 254. Bringing Intention to Projects
• 255. Successful Projects
• 256. The Three Project Traps
• 257. Communication With Intent
• 258. Risks Aren’t to Be Avoided
• 259. Constraints are a Gift
• 260. What Do You Make?
• 261. Problems are Opportunities
• 262. The Simple Hierarchy of Decision Effort
• 263. Optionality and Undo
• 264. Great Choice, Didn’t Work
• 265. Hidden Decisions Get Moldy
• 266. Compared to What?
• 267. A Quarter of a Million Dollars
• 268. Thinking About Money
• 269. No Regrets and the Kinds of Games We Play
• 270. Why is It Hard to Talk About Decisions?
• 271. Bad Luck Paralysis
• 272. Survivors are Noteworthy
• 273. The Regression Toward the Mean
• 274. Better Decisions and Better Outcomes
• 275. Not Making a Decision is the Easy Path
• 276. Assets are Tools
• 277. Assets Over Time
• 278. What Sort of Hammer Should You Buy?
• 279. Community Action
• 280. The Man Who Poisoned Us All
• 281. The Enduring Myth of Widespread Self-Control
• 282. Bringing a Strategic Approach to the Most Urgent System Change of Our Lifetimes
• 283. Helping the Market Fix What the Market Broke
• 284. Harnessing the Insatiable
• 285. The Action We Take
• 286. Indoctrination is Real
• 287. The Journey, Not an Event
• 288. Constant Pressure and Chiseling
• 289. Coordination Failure
• 290. Asynchronicity is a Superpower
• 291. Ignoring Sunk Costs: A Simple But Uncomfortable Idea
• 292. What Does “Wrong” Mean?
• 293. Tomorrow is Another Opportunity
• 294. Ignore Sunk Clowns
• 295. What to Wear on Wednesday?
• 296. People Like Us
• 297. Questions That Lead to Strategies
• 298. Acknowledgments
• Some Other Books by Seth Godin
• Bookstores Matter
• Copyright
• About the Publisher