One of the hit topics, according to the students in my recent capstone on strategy, was a comment from a guest speaker suggesting strategy isn’t reserved for those at the top of the organization chart. As mid-level managers and contributors, you can think strategically, create strategy around key group and organizational goals, ask questions and support your boss and function with strategy, and develop a personal strategy.

I love this perspective! It doesn’t take an MBA or a VP title to learn to wield your curiosity and practice to engage in strategy work at your level.

It helps to begin developing comfort and confidence in wielding the tools of strategy. Here’s a primer on my favorites. However, before you dive in, here’s my disclaimer. There is no tool, framework, book, or methodology where you simply input data and out comes a strategy. Good strategy tools and frameworks offer you different perspectives on your situation. The tools challenge you to think creatively and differently, and most importantly, to ask and answer the tough questions essential to identifying your strategic options. Remember, there are no easy answers in strategy work.

The importance of selecting the right tool for the situation

As a child, I marveled at the variety of my father’s tools for fixing and building things around our home. He patiently answered my questions about the different tools and their uses and would always conclude our discussions with the statement, “There’s no substitute for the right tool at the moment.”

He was right, of course. The carpenter and mechanic know it’s essential to match the tool to the situation. If you need finesse, it doesn’t pay to bring a tool that delivers force. And, if you need force, using the wrong tool is an exercise in futility. Remember, as the saying goes, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

A good tool is only valuable in the hands of a well-practiced craftsperson who cares deeply about the work and knows where and how to use it. The same goes for strategists.

Your challenge: making sense out of the noise

Working as a strategist is a commitment to learning to make sense out of the noise in the environment. From shifting industry dynamics to the macro forces creating seemingly chaotic, relentless change in our world, the work of strategy is more complicated than ever. We need the right tools to help us find coherence out of the cacophony.

While every practitioner has their favorites, I find three different tool sets head and shoulders above the rest for creating clarity and helping groups navigate the confusion surrounding strategy work. I use these tools both independently and in combination to assess a situation and form a strategy.

1. Find the “kernel of your strategy”

Richard Rumelt’s “Kernel of a Strategy,” described in his fabulous book “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy,” is the best tool I’ve uncovered for getting teams on the same page about strategy.

The kernel, as Rumelt describes it, includes the diagnosis, a guiding policy, and key actions. Roughly translated: What’s going on here? What should we do about it? What specifically will we do about it? The good news is you can use the kernel in almost any problem-solving and planning situation. It forces the pursuit of clarity and coherence.

2. Learn to H.O.P.

In another foundational book, “Escape Velocity,” Geoffrey Moore describes a framework of frameworks with his Hierarchy of Powers (H.O.P.). This tool set challenges teams to think of their business in a series of cascading layers starting at the top with category choice and proceeding through the company, segment, offer, and execution layers.

The challenge for the management team is to assess their situation vis-à-vis each layer and identify unique areas to compete, innovate, serve, and win. While Moore, the author of several outstanding strategy books, offers many more tools, the H.O.P. is excellent for helping teams view their situation and opportunities through different lenses. I adapt Moore’s H.O.P. as one tool set to help me create my diagnosis and guiding policy.

3. Paint with a palette

In “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy,” Boston Consulting Group’s Martin Reeves, Knut Haanaes, and Janmejaya Sinha suggest that the proper analysis of your external environment and market segments should be along the dimensions of predictability, malleability, and harshness.

Depending on your market or segment’s characterization, there’s a palette of five core strategy approaches and distinct actions to guide your choices. This tool set is extremely helpful in suggesting, guiding policy, and jump-starting the definition of coherent actions.

4. Embrace volatility and uncertainty

Rebecca Homkes wrote a fabulous book: Survive, Reset, Thrive — Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times, and I find the S.R.V. framework and her views on embracing uncertainty and volatility extremely valuable. For the emerging or accomplished strategist, the book and Rebecca’s ideas help round out a great toolset.

The Bottom Line for Now

Regardless of your level, you can start to familiarize yourself with the tools of strategy. They are tools for thinking. Choose your tools carefully, practice with them diligently, and remember that they are only as good as the hands wielding them.

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In both my Emerging Executive Accelerator and Manager of Managers programs, we work with the toolsets described above and offer guidance and practice on developing as a strategist 

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