Are you a fox or a hedgehog?

‘The fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing’ — (7th century greek poet, Archilocus)

Foxes are the masters of many; often chasing a number of ideas, engaging in sundry activities, achieving some full, some half successes, multi-threaded individuals and companies that are often knowledgable and detail-oriented, fight many battles on many fronts, but lack profound enlightening wisdom. Foxes ‘know’ a lot. Foxes come across intelligent. Foxes wax lyrical on various topics. Foxes are also very articulate. Seductive and charismatic. They charm with details, facts and analysis.

Hedgehogs, on the other hand, are about the essential ‘few’. Less to them is more. They focus on first principles and better still, know which principles come before others. They often make hard calls and ruthlessly cut and prioritize. They choose a few projects, finish them and finish them well.

Who do you think Dalai Lama is — fox or a hedgehog?

Hedgehogs also know a lot of facts and details. But unlike foxes they are less slave to those details. They exist in the service of distilling the essence. Hedgehog companies define clear priorities, frequently kill initiatives, share a list of what they have chosen to not do and choose those select few initiatives that move the needle. Leaders in hedgehog companies say “no” a lot.

Hedgehog companies understand the key principles of “innovation”, ‘survival’ and “scale”. They are the masters of the obvious and display strong execution around few key principles of customer centricity, culture primacy and fiscal responsibility. They know what they are great at, and what they are weak at. And their strategy reflects their strengths not their chutzpah. They choose if they are going to win the market by product leadership, operational leadership or cost leadership. They often pick one.

When foxes spew endless intelligent and analytical details about competition, market dynamics and business models, one quiet question from a hedgehog ushers in silence and changes the course of the conversation. Foxes like peanut butter strategy and revel in the intellectuality of many, while hedgehogs care maniacally yet quietly about that one result that trumps everything.

The key to becoming a hedgehog is practicing results-oriented thinking, intimately knowing the system that produces those results, fundamentally understanding the inputs and outputs to that system and asking yourself “What if not done right will fail the plan regardless of every other piece falling into place”?