Set the frameworks aside - what does a strategy partner actually need?

Over 15 years of do - fail - learn - fix - do, I've realized there are things I build on every day, constantly putting myself in front of hard problems to think through, yet I'd never slowed down to name them. Until the other day, when someone told me: “sometimes you think and decide so fast that others can't keep up.” So this is a distillation for myself, and a wider angle for younger folks.

First, when you fall into a mess, you need structured thinking - to see what the real problem actually is. Instinctively, most people rush to solutions, but the first task is to untangle the knot into clear parts, then trace it down to the root. Consulting calls this hypothesis-driven thinking: splitting a big problem into small, non-overlapping branches - the very approach that built McKinsey's name. Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, in Harvard Business Review, adds something worth pondering: many organizations burn money precisely because they solve, brilliantly, a problem that was framed wrong from the start.

Second, know the industry, know the industry, know the industry. What matters gets said three times. If you can, go deep into one industry and follow it all the way down. Add a sensitivity to the market - which can be trained - and you gain empathy and sharpness. Meaning you don't need to pause too long to grasp the whole context, break down the pieces, and read the people. In short: feel the beat & fit the bill.

Third - and this may be the capability that earns the word “partner”: the ability to co-create, helping others find the answer themselves rather than writing them a prescription and leaving. Edgar Schein, who laid the foundation for “process consultation,” draws a sharp line between two roles: the expert diagnoses and prescribes, while the partner works with you, not for you, so the business owner ends up owning both the problem and the solution. He argued that a problem is only solved sustainably when the organization itself learns how to solve it.

Fourth, the ability to break work into execution, when strategy meets reality and has to be reshaped again and again. Henry Mintzberg long ago showed that a good strategy mostly doesn't come from a perfect plan laid out in advance - it emerges and gets refined in the doing. This demands that the one steering dare to put work down. Choosing what to do is hard; choosing what to let go is harder.

These have been with me long enough to become reflex, though there are plenty more - I'll tell those later. Younger folks can take this as reference, but it won't all fit you, so message me with any questions.