His competitive advantages are the huge knowledge of human flaws ("Most people cannot master their emotions"), historic facts and understanding of conflicting interests, the feeling that he is in connection with a deeper and hidden sense of reality and a counter-intuitive approach to strategy ("I never gave George Bush enough credit for what he’s done in the Middle East. He
ignited a religious war between Shi’ites and Sunnis that will occupy
the region for the next 1,000 years").
WHAT IS STRATEGY?
This made me thinking about what is Strategy. Big W defines it as the "high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty". Von Clausewitz, a 18th century Prussian military thinker, says it is "the combination of individual engagements to attain the goal of the campaign or war" (Principles of war). According to Von Clausewitz, the main purposes of war are to conquer and destroy the armed power of the enemy and to gain public opinion. So destruction of other's power and recognition of it are the goals of war.
I agree with that, but I think the ultimate goal, or aim, of strategy is to gain power. Strategy is strictly related to war and military actions, but the art to achieve goals encompass all areas of life, from to get a degree, to conquer a girl's heart, to build a business, to start a polar expedition. Nonetheless there are two areas where strategy is better studied and applied: military and business. Here the means to measure success - the achievement of goals - are visible and palpable: the capture of a city and the return of investment.
A BUSINESS STRATEGIST
On this second field I found a very interesting piece of advice by a hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio. He founded Bridgewater Associates to provide investment advices over securities and government bonds and now manage over 150B dollars. He designed the firm around the principle of seeking truth without regard to position or authority, but based only on soundness of reasoning and merit.
The reason I introduced Dalio is to reproduce the "Process to Getting What You Want Out of Life". In other words is Strategy applied to real life. He says that "failure is by and large due to not accepting and successfully dealing with the realities of life, and that achieving success is simply a matter of accepting and successfully dealing with all my realities" and that without facing pain and reflecting upon it a person cannot evolve to fulfil his potential. We are all faced virtually every moment with choices to make: whether or not to study, progress, make our job done, pursue goals, girls, lay down on the couch, investigate, fight or run, win or accept defeat, step back or push back.
| The choice we face every moment to be blocked by pain or to endure through it and progress (c. Ray Dalio, Principles) |
THE PLAN
1) Set Your Goals.
You can have virtually anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want, so you have to make a decision about what you want to achieve and to kill what you would like to have but is not really meaningful or important to you.
Avoid setting goals based on what you think you can achieve.
2) Identifying and Not Tolerating Problems.
Most problems are potential improvements screaming at you.
Be very precise in specifying your problems.
Once you identify your problems, you must not tolerate them.
3) Diagnosing the Problems
You will be much more effective if you focus on diagnosis and design rather than jumping to solutions.
You must get at the root causes.
More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.
4) Designing the Plan (Determining the Solutions)
Creating a design is like writing a movie script in that you visualize who will do what through time in order to achieve the goal.
5) Doing the Tasks
What is needed here is good work habits, self-discipline, being proactive and result-oriented.
In order to complete all these 5 steps different qualities are needed. To set goals requires high-level thinking and personal honesty, to identify problems needs perception and intolerance of badness, to diagnose needs hyper-logic, to design plan needs creativity, to do the task needs self-discipline. All these task can be completed by different people with various qualities.
This was Ray Dalio Plan to Achieve Goals in Life. This is what I think is Strategy.
"I believe that you can
probably get what you want out of life if you can suspend your ego
and take a no-excuses approach to achieving your goals with
open-mindedness, determination, and courage, especially if you rely
on the help of people who are strong in areas that you are weak." (Ray Dalio)
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