Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, lots of what I think about in strategy is natural, if you will. I try to ask, how does the world generally operate, and is what we're doing consistent with the way the world generally operates or not? Roger, this was so much fun, we covered everything I was hoping we'd get through. I think we're going to help a lot of people with the way they think about strategy. Is there anything else you wanted to just leave listeners with, or say before we wrap up and let you go? We covered a lot, so there may not be anything left. Well, on strategy, there's one piece of advice I'd say. People often ask me about people who are natural strategists, or they say, I'm not naturally good at that, I'm more of an operational guy or gal. And what I tell them is, I have never met this mythical beast called a great natural strategist. And they often throw back in my face, Lafley. They say, look, Lafley, he was known as a strategy genius. And I say, yeah, but when I interviewed him in depth about his background, for a paper I was writing, what I discovered was when he was in the Navy, as a whatever, I don't know, probably 25-year-old in the Navy, he had a job where he had to think about strategy, and was testing things out, and doing things, and the like. And then, I realized that he had been practicing strategy for decades before he became the CEO, decades. And so, he just had more reps when he became CEO than almost anybody else that I've ever met. There's another guy, [inaudible 01:20:15], ex-CEO, now he's gone on to a higher level of Lego brand group, would be similar. So, great strategists that I have met have all one thing in common. They just practice. And anybody, there's no such thing as a person who is willing to practice strategy, who will end up saying, I'm operational, I don't do strategy well. Which links to our last thing about betterment. Just work on making different choices to solve problems. Not problems that I say, I'm not going to define your gap, it's one that you feel in your heart, I wish this were better. Work on it, if you do that, you'll be a great strategist. So, be encouraged, don't be discouraged. And the worst thing to do is to wait. People say, well, I've got all these operational concerns right now, and then I'll get to strategy later. You'll never amount to anything. Nobody who says that ever amounts to anything.…

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