Ever wonder why some people just seem to "see" the move before it happens? It’s not magic. It’s also not just being "smart" in the way we usually talk about IQ. When we dive into the mind of the strategist, we aren’t looking at a supercomputer. We’re looking at a very specific, often messy, and highly disciplined way of filtering reality.
Most people think strategy is about having a 50-step plan. Honestly, it’s the opposite. A real strategist knows that a 50-step plan is just a list of ways to fail because life—or the market, or the opponent—never follows the script. The true essence of this mindset is about seeing the "shape" of a situation.
Kenichi Ohmae, who basically defined this field with his 1982 classic The Mind of the Strategist, argued that great strategists don’t start with analysis. They start with a flash of intuition. That sounds counterintuitive, right? We’re told to look at the data. But Ohmae’s whole point was that if you only look at data, you’ll reach the same conclusion as everyone else. There’s no "edge" in doing what the spreadsheet tells you to do.
What's Actually Going on Inside the Mind of the Strategist?
It’s about decomposition.
If you hand a strategist a massive, complex problem—let’s say, "How do we beat a competitor who has double our budget?"—they don't try to solve the whole thing at once. They rip it apart. They look for the one or two "critical factors" that actually move the needle. This is what Richard Rumelt calls the "kernel" of strategy in his book Good Strategy Bad Strategy. He says most people mistake "fluff" and "goals" for strategy. Saying "we want to be the best" isn't a strategy. It's a wish.
The strategist's mind is a filter.
Imagine a sieve. Most people pour all their information into the sieve and try to hold onto everything. The strategist is looking for the three rocks that stay in the mesh while the sand falls through. They are obsessed with leverage. If I put one unit of effort here, do I get ten units of result there? If the answer is no, they move on. Quickly.
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The War Between Logic and Insight
Here is where it gets kinda weird. You need logic to test an idea, but you need insight to find it.
If you are purely logical, you are predictable. In business or chess or war, being predictable is a death sentence. But if you are purely intuitive, you are a loose cannon. You might get lucky, or you might drive the company off a cliff. The magic happens in the middle. Ohmae described this as a "creative leap." You look at the customer, you look at the competitor, and you look at your own company—the "Strategic Triangle"—and you find a way to rearrange them that nobody else saw.
Real World Winners: It’s Not Just Theory
Look at Reed Hastings at Netflix. When he decided to pivot from mailing DVDs to streaming, it wasn't because he had a crystal ball. He saw the "shape" of technology moving. He understood that his "critical factor" wasn't the red envelopes; it was the licensing of content and the ease of access.
Or take a look at Steve Jobs. People call him a visionary, which is true, but he was a brutal strategist. He cut Apple's product line from dozens of items down to just four. That is the strategist's mind at work: the courage to say "no" to 90% of things so the 10% can actually win. He understood that focus is a competitive advantage.
- Decomposition: Breaking the whole into parts.
- Reintegration: Putting those parts back together in a way that creates a new reality.
- The "Non-Linear" Shift: Doing something that doesn't follow the "logical" next step.
The Mental Models That Actually Matter
If you want to think like this, you have to stop thinking in straight lines.
One of the most famous frameworks used by people with this mindset is the OODA Loop, developed by military strategist John Boyd. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It sounds simple, but the "Orient" part is where the strategist lives. Orientation is about your mental models—how you see the world. If your orientation is wrong, your decision will be wrong, no matter how fast you act.
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Another one? Inversion. Charlie Munger, the late partner of Warren Buffett, was obsessed with this. Instead of asking "How do I make this company successful?" a strategist asks "What would definitely make this company fail?" and then avoids those things. It’s a lot easier to avoid stupidity than it is to seek brilliance.
Honestly, most of us are too close to our problems. We’re in the trenches. The strategist’s mind has this weird ability to zoom out to 30,000 feet and then zoom back in to a single detail in a heartbeat. It’s that shifting of perspective that uncovers the "bottleneck." In any system, there is always one bottleneck. If you fix anything else, you’re wasting your time. If you fix the bottleneck, everything changes.
Why "Best Practices" Are Usually a Trap
This is a hot take, but most business books are wrong because they preach "best practices."
If you do what everyone else does, you get what everyone else gets. A strategist looks at a "best practice" and asks, "What is the hidden cost of this?" or "What if the opposite were true?"
Take Southwest Airlines back in the day. The "best practice" for airlines was the hub-and-spoke model. Fly everyone to a big city, then branch out. Herb Kelleher looked at that and said, "What if we just go point-to-point?" He broke the industry's logic. That’s strategy. It’s not just being better; it’s being different in a way that matters to the customer.
The Role of Grit and Intellectual Honesty
You can’t be a strategist if you lie to yourself.
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This is the hardest part. The mind of the strategist must be ruthlessly honest about what is working and what isn't. Most people get "married" to their ideas. They have an ego. They want to be right. A strategist doesn't care about being right; they care about the outcome. If the data shows their "brilliant" plan is tanking, they scrap it without a second thought.
This requires a certain kind of detachment. You have to be able to look at your own business or career as if you were an outsider. It’s why consultants get paid so much—not because they are necessarily smarter, but because they don't have the emotional baggage that the CEO has. But you can train yourself to do this. You can ask, "If I were taking over this job today, what’s the first thing I would fire or change?"
How to Start Thinking This Way Today
You don't need an MBA to start developing this mindset. You just need to change the questions you ask.
- Identify the Constraint. Ask yourself: "What is the one thing that, if removed, would make everything else easier or unnecessary?"
- Challenge the 'Given'. List the three "rules" everyone in your industry follows. Now, imagine a world where those rules don't exist. What does that look like?
- Focus on the Gap. Don't look at where the market is. Look at where it isn't. Strategy is about finding the "white space" where you aren't fighting for scraps.
- Practice Inversion. If you're trying to reach a goal, list every single thing that could prevent you from getting there. Tackle those first.
The mind of the strategist is ultimately a restless one. It’s never satisfied with "that’s how we’ve always done it." It’s a constant process of breaking things down and building them back up. It’s exhausting, sure. But in a world where everyone is following the same playbook, being the one person who can rewrite the rules is the only real way to win.
Actionable Next Steps
Start by auditing your current "strategy." Write down your top three goals. Next to them, write down the one specific action that provides the most leverage for each. If you have ten actions for one goal, you don't have a strategy; you have a to-do list. Cut the list. Focus on the pivot point. That is where the power is.
Next, spend twenty minutes a day just thinking about "why." Why do customers buy from you? Why do they leave? Don't look at the surveys—look at the behavior. People lie in surveys; they never lie with their wallets. Use that raw data to re-orient your mental model. Strategy isn't a document you write once a year; it's a way of breathing.