If you brilliantly move through all the key principles in Stages 1 through 3, you will likely create a very successful company. In Stage 4, you make your company built to last. There are three key principles in Stage 4:

• Practice productive paranoia (avoid the 5 Stages of Decline).

• Do more clock building, less time telling.

• Preserve the core/stimulate progress (achieve the next BHAG).

The Process

Setting strategy involves the following basic steps:

First, review the vision of the company. If you haven’t clarified your vision, do so. In particular, ensure that the current mission is clear. As you recall from Chapter 4, your mission (which is the third component of vision, after core values and beliefs and purpose) is analogous to the specific mountain you are going to climb.

Next, do an internal assessment of the company’s capabilities. This is analogous to examining capabilities and resources of the expedition team.

Third, do an external assessment of the environment, markets, competitors, and trends. This is analogous to studying pictures of the mountain, examining weather reports, assessing new trends in technology that might help you in your ascent, and paying attention to competitors who seek to reach the summit ahead of you.

Finally, taking the internal and external assessments into account, make key decisions about how you intend to go about achieving your current mission. This is analogous to mapping out the route you are going to take up the side of the mountain.

Rather than attempting to acquire your way into a more attractive position, you can set a better goal for your company. The real goal should be to create an internal discipline of strategic thinking that enables a more thoughtful approach to the current game, regardless of industry, and connects to possible different futures and opportunities.

Principles of Emergent Strategy

“In the study and practice of emergent strategy, there are core principles that have emerged and that guide me in learning and using this idea and method in the world. I gather them here with the expectation that they will grow.

Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)

Change is constant. (Be like water).

There is always enough time for the right work.

There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.

Never a failure, always a lesson.

Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy).

Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass—build the resilience by building the relationships.

Less prep, more presence.

What you pay attention to grows

”If the business is really successful, then there is usually a good strategic logic behind that success, be it hidden or not. But the truth is that many companies, especially large complex companies, don’t really have strategies. At the core, strategy is about focus, and most complex organizations don’t focus their resources. Instead, they pursue multiple goals at once, not concentrating enough resources to achieve a breakthrough in any of them.