This article is based on Alex Smith’s insightful talk at the London Product Marketing Summit. PMA members can enjoy the complete recording here. 

What if I told you that you could 30x your business just by making the right decisions? It might sound ridiculous, but it’s more than possible. 

Think about it: if you choose decision A over decision B, and you put the same amount of resources into both, the outcome will still be different. Some decisions lead to huge wins, while others fall flat. 

The difference between these outcomes? Strategy.

Strategy isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s everything. Those “fork-in-the-road” moments are when your business's strategy will truly come to life. The choices you make will shape your business’s future, and yet, despite how important it is, most businesses still don’t have a solid strategy in place.

So, in this article, I’m going to walk you through the four secrets of a strong strategy, so you can make sure your business is on the right track. 

Let’s get into it!

Does your business have a strategy?

We’ll start with a quick exercise. I’ll give you seven seconds to think about what your business’s strategy is. Ready? Go!

If your business has a clear, coherent strategy, it should be right at the tip of your tongue. It should be something you can easily recall because it’s the framework that guides every decision your business makes. 

If you hesitated, it’s a clear sign that your business doesn’t have a well-defined strategy. Even if you answered quickly, you might still be wondering Is this really a strategy? (More on that later!) 

My point is this: despite how much it influences a business’s success, strategy is often given very little attention. It’s not that most businesses have bad strategies; the problem is that they don’t even try to think about the strategic questions at all. 

Too often, businesses just jump into hustle mode – reacting to what comes their way, selling what they can, and hoping it works out. This reactive approach rarely leads to long-term success. Strategy is about proactive decision-making, and it should be at the heart of everything your business does.

What happens if you don't have a strategy?

So, what happens when you don’t have a strategy? These are all things you’ll likely recognize if your business doesn’t have a solid strategy in place:

  • Commodification: You end up being interchangeable with your competitors.
  • Weak demand: You struggle to drum up significant customer interest.
  • Price pressure: You start cutting margins to stimulate demand.
  • Wasted investment: You pour money into projects that, in hindsight, were a waste of resources.
  • Poor leadership: The lack of focus and alignment across teams causes confusion.
  • Stagnation: Your business stalls, with no clear pathway to growth.

Many people think these challenges are just a part of running a business. It’s seen as the “normal” everyday pressure that can be overcome with stronger marketing or operations. But here’s the thing: these are not natural problems! They’re signs of a serious issue within the business: the lack of focus on strategy.

How did we get here?

Before we get into the solution to these issues, let’s pause for a moment and think about how we got here. It seems strange, right? How could something as important as strategy be so misunderstood or overlooked in the day-to-day workings of most businesses?

The simple answer is that the gatekeepers of strategic thinking are often big consultancy firms, academia, and authors like Michael Porter and Richard Rumelt. The theories and ideas they put out are great, but they come with a fatal flaw: complexity.

Think about it – academia loves to add layers of complexity, and consultancy firms thrive on making things more complicated (and profitable, with billable hours). If you’re writing about strategy and you want to get a book published, it can’t just be 100 pages; it needs to be 300. All of this adds unnecessary complexity.

The unfortunate result of all this complexity is that strategy ends up being tailored to huge companies – the billion-dollar businesses that can afford it. Meanwhile, smaller businesses (and even mid-sized ones) miss out. Strategic thinking doesn’t trickle down, and businesses of all sizes suffer because they’re not thinking about strategy in a meaningful way.

Anyone can be a strategist

The thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. Strategy is not a technical discipline. Think about it: you can’t be a lawyer without studying law, and you can’t be a doctor without going through medical school. These are technical fields that require a specific body of knowledge.

But strategy? It’s not like that at all. There’s no set body of knowledge you need to have to make strategic decisions. And the proof is in the great strategic thinkers of our time – the likes of Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Richard Branson. None of these people had MBAs or studied strategy formally, and yet, somehow, they were naturally making the right strategic decisions.

This shows that some people – maybe those who are a bit more gifted or quirky – can make those decisions almost instinctively. But for most of us, it’s not quite that natural. 

The good news? It’s not that hard to learn the basics and get better at it. You don’t need an MBA or formal training to be effective in strategy.

So, I’m going to share four simple principles that anyone can use to guide their strategic thinking. These are straightforward enough that you don’t need a degree to understand them, but they’ll help you start thinking like a strategist.

You might not become the best strategist in the world overnight, but I can promise you this: you’ll be ahead of 95% of people in your industry, really quickly. So, let’s dive in.

Secret #1: The true definition of strategy

If I asked you to define strategy, you’d probably say something like, “Strategy is a plan to achieve a goal.” And you know what? That’s not wrong. 

The problem with this definition is that it’s just too broad. You could apply it to pretty much anything – the strategy for a happy marriage, the strategy for getting six-pack abs, or even a strategy for invading Prussia!