I played Magic the Gathering when I was a kid. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a deck building game where you duel with another player as wizards with fantasy armies (nerd alert.) As an adult in my thirties, I was surprised that it was still around. I used to live in a neighborhood near a gaming store that hosted “Friday Night Magic” and I picked up the game again and played for awhile.

What makes it fun is that it’s complex. There’s no one way to beat an opponent, but many strategies to emerge victorious with lots of decisions to get there. For example, one player might play a “control” deck and use their cards to sabotage the efforts of the other player who tries to flood the battlefield with small creatures.

They’re both playing Magic, but they’re not playing the same game.

Your business is similar.

This weekend, I taught my “little” from the Big Brothers Big Sisters program how to rappel. I set him up at the top of a hill and showed him how to tie in and use a friction device and a special safety knot to descend a double rope. He practiced a few times and then I took him to a steeper hill with a small cliff on it and he was able to rappel down that too. He’s scared of heights and was pretty psyched about all this. Afterwards, as we drove to an ice cream parlor, he repaid his rappel lesson by telling me a story about Thor.

The story takes place in a castle’s hall that is full of giants. They challenge Thor to a variety of tasks: wrestling a crone, an eating contest, a drinking contest, and a foot race. Despite being a god, Thor loses on every account and is humiliated. Only when he is leaving does the lord of the castle reveal to him that every contest was fixed in some manner. The crone was actually old age and all strength falls to that, the eating contest was against fire who eats all, the drinking contest was rigged with a drinking horn that had a hole connected to the sea, and the foot race was against thought, “for no action is faster than thought.” (The actual story involves more characters and scenes: https://norse-mythology.org/tale-utgarda-loki/ )

No action is faster than thought is a good lesson to take from a story.

Many problems can be anticipated long before you encounter them. One of the goals of a business growth plan is to bring these to light and address them on paper before they are realized as an obstacle to the business.

No one can predict the future, but that doesn’t mean the future is unpredictable.

Featured image is Thor and party facing the immense jötunn Skrymir in an illustration (1902) by Elmer Boyd Smith. Used under public domain.

One of the questions that I’ve been puzzling over for the past year is, “What makes behavior strategic?”

This question arose from my StrengthsFinder’s report, where it listed one of my strengths as “Strategic.” In the context of StrengthsFinder, that is someone who “can sort through the clutter to find the best route.”

I wrote earlier this week on the benefit of questions and one of the effects of having a good long term question is that it sifts gold from the dust of your experience. Just by holding the question across the passage of time, answers begin to appear as your mind forms connections.

Some of the gold that I’ve sifted from the river is:

• The location of strategy is at the beginning of an endeavor. Strategy concerns how you start ( Beginnings as Leverage Points ). Additionally, you can always start again, at any moment, and give yourself the opportunity for strategy.
• A strategic perspective is oriented towards anticipation and prediction. What could happen?
• Strategic behavior is about working in the future. It’s about making choices that warp the possible in your favor.
• The practice of strategy is planning. The product of strategy is a plan.

Beyond just honing my strengths, I’ve been curious about how to approach small business growth from a strategic lens. As in, “What does a strategic approach to small business growth look like?”

The short answer is that it’s the development and execution of a growth plan. The long answer I’ll explore in future posts.

Featured image is Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to Pericles, Aspasia, Alcibiades and Friends, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1868. Pericles held the title of “Strategos,” an ancient greek military general role that is the origin of the word strategy. He fought Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and initiated the project to build the Parthenon. This painting has to be one of my favorites that I’ve encountered. Used under public domain.

Businesses are whole systems. To make a comparison to your body, there are organs that have entirely different roles, but they all contribute to bringing you to life.

In any business, you’ll need some sort of function that keeps its organs healthy:

• Finance
• Marketing
• Operations
• Leading
• People

None of these can be allowed to fall into disrepair or the entire business suffers.