Understand the Shape of the Game You're Playing

This is an article about strategy. This is also going to be a slightly messier article, and I apologise in advance. I want to talk about a fuzzy business concept that I think is useful, but that I haven’t managed to get into a coherent form. Normally, on Commoncog, I avoid writing about concepts that I haven’t whipped into shape. But I’m making an exception for this for three reasons. First, I’ve just published a sequence of two essays that contain stories that I can reference. One of those stories is the personal one I told in Fundraising with No Investors, which is foundational to my business experience and therefore critical to this piece. Second, a business mentor of mine recently published a wonderful article about sensemaking. The bit that I want to call out is the relationship between coherence and usefulness, illustrated with the following diagram:

Commoncog’s essays tend to be in the green category. This week, I’m going to try for blue.

The third reason is linked to the second: the idea I’m about to describe is useful. I find myself using it repeatedly, even as I find it difficult to talk about. Hopefully its lack of coherence isn’t too terrible.