But winning is better than losing

Strategy is never quitting until you win.

But

winning is better than losing.

This was the first thing that caught my eye when reading Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.

I was born surrounded by books.

In my house there were more books than space on the shelves. You would find books pilling all the way to the ceiling in every division of the house. Yes, even the bathroom (that’s where all the Saramago books were, not because they were bad but because everyone loved reading them I guess?)

My dad always thought there was no better company than a book. When I asked my grandmother how he was when he was young she would always paint a picture of him reading a book on the couch. When I asked him how to entertain myself in parties that were boring, his response: a book.

Whenever my parents weren’t home I would sneak around and find a new book to read. But not because they were super strict with their children reading books. I knew it would make my dad proud to see me reading and, as a contrarian, I didn’t want to give him the privilege.

One of those books was The Death of a Beekeeper.

It’s a book about a teacher that finds he has cancer. However, he decides not to read the diagnosis that was posted to him. He continues living his life: reminiscing of what could have been, enduring the pain, the rejection of his own dog, shopping lists, and all sorts of other things you do on your day to day.

It’s a plain book, even boring. But I liked it. So much so that this book had a far bigger influence in my life than any other that I came to read ever since.

Throughout the book the author kept remembering the reader to

Begin again. Never give up.

That sentence stuck with me.

As a teenager, I often felt lost and wondering what to do with my life. It’s a feeling many of us have in our teen years, I suppose.

The only verdict I could find, the only thing that was sure, was death itself. Everything else seemed meaningless.

Begin again. Never give up.

It was this sentence that shifted my attention from the end to the adventure.

It allowed me to accept my mistakes. To move on.

And so I changed my attitude towards life. And the adventures I lived are a result of this change.

This is why the quote from Good Strategy, Bad Strategy stuck with me. When the entrepreneur says “strategy is never quitting until you win” it was more than a quote to me.

This had been my survival strategy in life: the way I got to adulthood happy and motivated to pursue my interests.

Later on, in business, it became a mantra. A secret weapon if you will — I couldn’t be the best at everything, and I couldn’t always be right. But I’d be damned if I didn’t keep trying.

This mantra allowed me to remain focused, happy, and grateful for the opportunities that I got. When it didn’t work out I would

Begin again. Never give up.

While working I reinforced this mantra in the teams I was part of. I used it as a way to motivate people that I was nurturing.

You see, you can only improve when operating outside your comfort zone. But when you are outside the comfort zone, you fail more often. But that’s ok, you can pick yourself right up and try, try again.

Begin again. Never give up.

Richard Rumelt (the author of the Good Strategy, Bad Strategy) replied to the entrepreneur “but winning is better than losing”.

And that’s the key to understand the role of strategy in business.

You set your own goal. You can even imagine what you will be doing in five, ten years. What’s important to you? How does it feel like? How does it smell?

You can plan for the goal that you want to achieve.

When you are clear on what that goal is, a strategy is the set of (coherent) actions you need to take, under a guiding policy that plays to your strengths, based on the situational diagnosis you made.

And as good as resilience is, it is not a strategy.

It’s a survival technique.