Diagnosis for strategy

strategy (29), eng-strategy-book (18)

This is a work-in-progress draft!

Explain the general role of diagnosis for writing strategy.

Diagnosis is about understanding the constraints and challenges your strategy needs to address. In particular, it’s about doing that understanding while explicitly holding yourself back from thinking about solving the problem at hand. To the greatest extent possible, your diagnosis should be a self-aware one, recognizing how you, your team, and your organizaton contribute to the constraints. If you can’t acknowledge certain constraints, then you’re unlikely to solve for them effectively, and your strategy discussion will become an orchestrated illusion rather than an act of real strategy.

topics:

  • the role of diagnosis in strategy creation
  • How skipping diagnosis ruins strategies
  • steps to develop your diagnosis
  • testing your diagnosis widely, including bringing stakeholders and skeptics early
  • navigating politics in diagnosis
  • self-awareness in diagnosis

This is an exploratory, draft chapter for a book on engineering strategy that I’m brainstorming in #eng-strategy-book. As such, some of the links go to other draft chapters, both published drafts and very early, unpublished drafts.

Diagnosis is strategy’s foundation

  • the role of diagnosis in strategy creation
  • where exploration is about understanding the evolution of reality outside of your team and organization, diagnosis is about understanding the current reality impacting your strategy

Skipping diagnosis ruins strategies

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Develop your diagnosis

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Test your diagnosis widely

  • testing your diagnosis widely, including bringing stakeholders and skeptics early

There are things that are hard to say out loud. Can you find a way to say them without judgment or blame?

The role of self-awareness

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Summary

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