#408 – June 2, 2025

Consider Lean Strategy-Making

Hello, fellow strategists!  In this issue we look at lean strategy-making processes, recruiting to a team, writing AI prompts (and avoiding “slop”), listening as a leadership tool, along with other insights to help you succeed with an 80:20 focus on priorities.

Quick Takes

Off-Court Lessons for Leadership

Readers who are basketball fans will be familiar with legendary coach and Nike executive George Raveling. In his new book What You’re Made For, co-written with Ryan Holiday, he shares some instructive lessons for leaders.

One is to lead with purpose and intention. This means not just drifting but actively shaping a path guided by a clear “why.” Discover what you are uniquely made for and pursue it through deliberate action and persistence, letting your intention evolve as you face challenges and gain experience.

Raveling also emphasizes the critical role of continuous learning, particularly through reading, and the power of attentive listening. Here are three practical tips:

• Write down your listening-to-talking goal. (Aim for 20% talking, 80% listening.)
• Prepare questions to listen and learn. (You might ask: What are you seeing out there? Have you read anything good lately? What are you finding of interest these days?)
• Reflection is a crucial practice to capture quick insights, data points, and nuggets of wisdom to carry forward. (Review and summarize your meeting notes at the end of the day.)

Sell the Team, Not Just the Job

Having great “co-workers” is a primary attractor for top talent looking for new opportunities.

Recruiting specialist John Sullivan makes a good case for appealing to prospects with a snapshot of the team they would be working with — short but compelling bio summaries of their experience, education, skills, interest areas and/or LinkedIn profiles. While keeping the team profile easy to scan, you can also cover key team accomplishments, milestones, and future goals.

Sullivan notes the approach delivers several benefits, including more prospects applying, fewer dropping out of your hiring process, and candidates feeling more excited, welcomed, included and more likely to accept your offer. For more details on the technique, see: DrJohnSullivan.com

Write CAREful Prompts and Watch for “AI Slop”

If you’re using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot, here’s a good, simple scheme you might incorporate when writing your prompts. Kate Moran from the Nielsen/Norman Group, a firm specializing in design and user experience, recommends including these four key components:

• Context: Describe the situation or context for your ask.
• Ask: Request specific action (define the outputs, steps, format).
• Rules: Provide guardrails and constraints.
• Examples: Demonstrate what you want (and don’t want).

Another bit of advice on using AI comes from Beware the “Slop”: AI’s Hidden Risks. Cameron Axford and Martin Wissmath of Carters Professional Corporation warn of a largely unexamined risk — the creeping influence of what some call “AI slop”.

This term refers to low-quality, misleading, or error-prone content generated by AI — often appearing polished and professional but lacking accuracy or depth. Slop may have a banal, realistic style and is also easy to generate, making it attractive for lazy, inexperienced or time-starved AI users.

Slop is risky across all sectors, but charities and not-for-profits are especially vulnerable due to their limited resources for oversight and fact-checking. Responsible AI use demands time spent on vigilance, editing, and discernment.

 

8020Info Drill-Down:

Consider a Lean Strategy-Making Process

Organizations make strategic decisions every week, not only as part of a three-year or five-year strategic planning cycle. In HBR, Michael Mankins explains why it makes sense to incorporate lean strategy-making as an ongoing standardized process.

In lean manufacturing, the goal is to establish precise procedures for making products in the safest, easiest, and most efficient manner possible. We can do the same when it comes to strategy development. Standardizing critical processes will typically lead to more consistency, more work done, better quality and lower costs.

Do we really need a unique, customized process each time we must make a strategic decision?

If we handle similar decisions in vastly different ways, the process often leads to slower decision-making, suboptimal choices and/or poor results — a problem that was identified in a survey of 350 executives by Bain & Company.

There’s no reason, however, that the strategy process can’t become standard operating practice, just as manufacturing processes are. Some leading executives have adapted their practices to attack strategic decision-making with a three-stage cycle:

• First, set priorities by articulating a performance ambition, comparing it against a multiyear outlook. Identify which issues must be addressed to close the gaps and place them on a strategic backlog list, an ongoing stack of challenges in tension with priorities.
• Strategy is a game of choices, and good choices start with strong alternatives. So next, for each issue waiting on the backlog, methodically gather facts, explore alternatives and then make highly specific choices and commitments. (It also helps to keep a decision log.)
• Finally, monitor your success at meeting those commitments, making adjustments and/or, as may happen, returning issues to the backlog of strategic decisions needed.

If you’re facing pressure to reduce waste, move faster, make wiser choices, and/or gain a comparative edge, consider adopting this rigorous lean approach to strategy making.

For Your Reading List:  Does It Matter?

In The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance, researcher Zach Mercurio speaks to how people have a fundamental need to be seen, heard, and valued. Yet increasingly, people report feeling overlooked, ignored, and underappreciated at work. They don’t feel they matter to their leaders or organizations.

Mercurio introduces a simple yet effective framework for making daily interactions with your team members more meaningful — the practices of • Noticing (seeing and hearing others), • Affirming (showing people how their unique gifts make a difference), and • Needing (showing people they’re relied on and indispensable). The book offers practical advice, helpful exercises, and real-world examples to illustrate how to help people know they matter.

Closing Thought: Just Begin

“To know what you are going to draw, you have to begin drawing.”
— Spanish painter and sculptor, Pablo Picasso.