Strategy and FOMO
LinkedIn’s COO Dan Shapero just released a short but highly insightful course called “How to Think Strategically.” In contrast to many books on strategy, the content immediately stands out for its elegant simplicity. Great teachers avoid complex taxonomies. They shrink an apparently boundless concept down to a visual metaphor. That’s what Dan has done here.
Dan explains that strategy is about choosing and committing to a specific opportunity. An opportunity can be compared to a mountain, and the terrain can be thought of as the basis of competition. Preeminent companies scale the largest and most treacherous mountains because they are best equipped to handle the terrain. They figure out what it will take to reach the summit, and they invest in a unique set of climbing capabilities.
From a psychological perspective, this is a hugely important concept. Our understanding of success is often clouded by a “survivorship bias.” We praise people and institutions that have passed through a rigorous selection process while dismissing those that haven’t. We assume winners were always destined to prevail, simply because of where they stand today.
A clear understanding of strategy reveals the absurdity of this thinking. Successful strategies are grounded in hard choices and trade-offs. Good strategies exclude potential mountains. They ignore areas of the terrain that are not considered essential to the climbing pace. Strategy is as much about things not done as things done.
For this reason, fear of missing out (FOMO) is the mortal enemy of sound strategic thinking. Whether we’re talking about a personal or professional mountain, the temptation is always to shift one’s focus in response to new signals of opportunity. Strategic judgment is about knowing whether a signal is relevant to the mountain you are supposed to be on.
At a company all-hands some years ago, I remember an employee asked former CEO Jeff Weiner why LinkedIn hadn’t yet introduced features that were proving to be wildly successful on Facebook. Weiner quickly dispensed with the question by saying, “We are not Facebook.” He knew what mountain he wanted to be on. He acknowledged it was important to be flexible and keenly attuned to the operating environment. But he saw strategy as a filter for deciding what matters to the mission.
Salespeople go through a version of this temptation all the time. They select a handful of Critical Few accounts for the year, knowing these accounts will have a disproportionate impact on their annual number. That’s their mountain. Then they determine what it will take to climb that mountain. That’s their terrain. At some point, they begin to fear other opportunities might be passing them by. They start to second guess their focus.
This is why upfront analysis and deliberation are so important. If you find your feet slipping on the rock face, if you're tempted to abort the climb, it could be the moment to revisit the core strategic questions:
What’s the problem or challenge I’m confronting?
What’s the path I need to be on?
How will this decision hasten or hinder my journey?