Operator Strategy: Frameworks, Taste, and Real Decisions

Most people who work in strategy have never been taught what strategy actually is. They've learned frameworks. They've built decks. They've run offsites. But a framework is a tool for organizing information, not a substitute for a call. And most frameworks, used the way they're typically used, produce the illusion of rigor without producing a decision. This course starts by fixing that confusion. The core of the course is the two questions that do most of the work in any serious strategy conversation: where will you play, and how will you win there. These aren't abstract concepts. You'll apply them to real operator situations, learn to spot when a where-to-play is too broad to act on, and build the habit of asking what a strategy is explicitly not pursuing. That last part matters more than most people think. A strategy that doesn't exclude anything isn't a strategy. The course also covers the two skills that separate operators who think clearly about strategy from those who don't: sizing opportunities honestly (bottom-up, with stated assumptions, not a TAM slide with a confident number on it) and recognizing strategy theater when it's happening. If you've ever sat in a planning session that produced a beautiful document and no actual decision, you already know what theater looks like. This course gives you the vocabulary to name it and the tools to replace it with something real.