Best Preface of the book – “The Rosetta Stone of Strategy”

Strategy is the backbone of any organisation. It is by far the most crucial decision that could be taken. Without a clear strategy, your organisation would act like a headless organism, a stray sheep, a ship without a helm.

  In free economies, businesses will commonly be in a state of war. Therefore, one should never sleep on his watch. Skipping Strategy or sloppily producing it would be much like trying to collect water with a net, leaving your organisation to the mercy of nothing but luck. Leaders should take this decision carefully, as the fate of their organisations is at stake.

Some say actions speak louder than words. However, for actions to create a significant impact, you need to have an incisive Strategy.

Post-mortal investigations of R.I.P companies pointed out that over 95% of the big-sized, mighty companies that had fallen suffered from fuzzy and contradictory strategies. The G-POST helps you avoid this ill-fated track and produce an inclusive strategy with clarity and focus. 

I would portray Strategy as a mould that points to the chosen path to reach your target, dictating the cast form of tactic— the engine to get you there, in its own spitting image.

  The “Golden Path of Strategy”, or in short, the G-POST, is this mould. It is an orientation tool and a systematicinstrument that allows you to see the wood for the trees. It has one purpose alone—to help you set wisely and clearly the optimal strategy top-down—from corporate Strategy down to its derivatives across the main functions of your organisation, its “moving parts”, and throughout the most crucial strategic intersections. Finally, it helps you build and implement your tactics in full swing.

  The G-POST is an all-inclusive strategy tool that deals, in synergy, with the Strategy of the core business and the sub-business categories.

  It is a multi-stage tool where each stage adds value to the previously chosen one.

Furthermore, it is a multidimensional tool that crosses the most critical strategic intersections, the most important functions and influential parts—the tip-of-the-spear elements.

  Moreover, it is a multiple-choice tool that allows you a panoramic commanding view while building your strategic map. A tool where each stage offers what I call a “strategic selection” of strategic paths to opt from in a “cafeteria style”. The choice you will opt for must be synergetic with the previously chosen stages and the company’s internal and external constraints and accelerators—your S.W.O.T.

The tool has 36 stages, or if you wish, 36 vertebrae of the company’s backbone—its SCD-Strategic Critical Dimensions. Each stage consists of up to 13 Strategic-Paths for you to opt from. The G-POST unfolds up to 247 inner strategic paths that provide you with the most suitable combination for your unique situation.

The G-POST allows your unique fingerprint with up to 1.24 x 10²⁴   different Strategy combinations. Those supply you with a panoramic view while building your strategic map to follow.

In a bid to ensure complete synergy amongst different “organs” of the company, the selected path of each stage of the Strategy must carry a “genetic similarity” of the previous stages, sharing the same “strategic D.N.A.”, so to speak, with common traits. Thus, all the derivatives’ Strategic Paths will be connected and interwoven to prop and uphold each other to strive towards the set objectives and pave your way to achieve those with might and main.

Strategy = [(W)× N  × C   – ( T )] ^36SCDs* × (O)                                                                   W   W

The sum of the strategic paths of all stages-SCDs woven with a ‘gold silk thread’ is your chosen Golden Path Of Strategy-G-POST, the backbone of Strategy, the Strategy. Your strategy map in the maze of complex reality, the canals in which you will cast your tactics for successful execution.

In many senses, a company is similar to an organism, where all the cells, the tissues and the organs must work in harness, tightly knit with full compatibility and synergy to strive for life. The G-POST promises strategic consistency and synergy both with the market and your organisation. Without those, the company strategy might turn into nothing but a limp dart that cannot pierce its way through and hit your target.

By seeing all the options under your eyes like a battle map, the G-POST helps you predict the strategic moves of your main competitors and plan better. It is much like the difference between travelling with an updated map that includes all the needed information and travelling with a blurred outdated sketch.

  Unlike the Kafka castle, where no one understands the mysterious ways and decisions of those who govern the place, here I suggest that managers of all levels share Strategy and its derivatives and their full intentions with their people and key suppliers. Strategy and tactics are not a one-person show. Sharing will enhance the necessary cooperation with your employees to conduct a successful business with better understanding and transparency.

  Do remember that an engine is as strong as its weakest pylon, as Strategy is strong as your weakest key worker. Think of your company as a caterpillar, with each one of its legs representing a worker or a manager. Now think that each one of its legs is pushing in a different direction. Well, needless to say, a lot of energy and money will be wasted.

A structured tool like the G-POST allows you to put all your people on the same page, creating a common language between you and your people in a bid to amplify the company’s cooperation and performance.

The G-POST can serve a company of any industry and size, a country, and some suggested even an individual.

I have never said I am the sole owner of the truth or possess the only way to set a strategy right. I might make mistakes; however, in this book, I strive to present a clear way based on logic and a lot of experience, and not on an old Ottoman Road where you realise you have been on it only when you get off it.

The great philosopher Aristotle once said there was only one way to avoid criticism, ‘Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing!’ I chose to do something because there was a need, there was a lot of confusion and furore rippling across companies of all sizes, and I am ready with love to get a hot shower of criticism, as this is the way to evolve and get better.

Last, the G-POST is a living tool. Thus, if you find an additional path or stage that I have not thought about, you are most welcome to add it. Besides, if you inform me, it will be added in the next edition, for which you will get full credit.

Books are the stepping stones of human progress. I do hope you will find this one worthy.