The Personal Strategy Sprint: a simple way of creating a personal strategy for yourself
Even though you might like the idea of having a personal strategy for navigating better through the uncertainties of life, you might have asked yourself:
Ok, so how do I create one for myself?
Read on to discover a simple approach that could be useful, especially if it’s the first time you’re doing this or if you don’t have lots of time on your hands.
Introducing the Personal Strategy Sprint
What if you could treat creating or updating your personal strategy as a series of short exercises, that you could do from Monday to Friday in a single week?
Kind of a series of mini-workouts that you could find 30 to 45 minutes for, in the morning, during lunch hours or in the evening?
This format is just a guide, of course — you can do the exercises in the weekends, have a gap day between them or group more exercises in a single day if you find the time for them. Each of us has different rhythms and need to test variations to discover what works.
Here’s a visual summary of the approach:
Let’s look a bit closer at each exercise is about 💡
Monday — 30 minutes
Starting with making sense of the environment could be a helpful first exercise. A guiding question for this exercise is:
What’s happening around me?
Here’s my own story of how I answered this question:
Quick tip:
- In my experience, I found that my initial urge is to research a bit more. Read some global / industry / country / tech etc. news for example. I’ve learned to ignore this urge and just take this time to reflect and write down what comes to mind.
Tuesday — 40 minutes
After having the big picture from thinking about the environment and what’s going on around you, it might be useful to take a moment and consider what’s on your radar. A guiding question for this exercise is:
What are the main things that I’m paying attention to?
For example, my personal take about this:
Quick tips:
- Think of this exercise as a filtering one — what’s truly important from all the things that go on around you?
- I’ve learned that using a time limit (e.g. 20 minutes) helps me focus my thoughts. It might help you as well
Then, it might be useful to consider the reality of your own capabilities before exploring different ways forward. A guiding question for this exercise is:
What am I able to do?
When creating my personal strategy for 2021, I’ve discovered 5 new capabilities that I’ve recently developed, for example. See details here:
Quick tip:
- From practice, I’ve learned that — for this 20 minutes exercise — prioritizing capabilities that are connected to what I consider truly important at the moment is more useful than creating a wide list of skills, knowledge areas, strengths etc.
Wednesday — 45 minutes
Time to start exploring different ways of going forward. An exercise that might be useful now is thinking of multiple options first. A guiding question for this is:
Ok, so how would all these insights translate into figuring out my way forward, in 2021?
You can read here about how I created 4 strategic options for 2021:
Quick tip:
- Based on my experience with offering strategic advisory to leadership teams, I’ve found that it’s useful to not stop at the few obvious options that come to mind. My invitation is to use your creativity to generate a few more options than the obvious ones before going to the next exercise. Usually these extra options come with some valuable insights for what’s next.
Thursday — 45 minutes
I’ve found that having a conversation partner for exploring in detail the strategic options that you have just generated is invaluable. Some guiding questions for discussing about the options are:
- What’s the value added to others by pursuing that specific option? Would I serve the same beneficiaries or not?
- What are the financial assumptions behind each option? Would pursuing that option be viable from a financial standpoint?
- What are the risks associated with pursuing each option? How big is the impact & probability of the risks becoming reality?
- How ready am I to invest in these new things? How much of my current capabilities support this option?
- Who would I become If I prioritize those specific things for my working life?
You can read my story about the deep dive into my strategic options and deciding on a personal strategy going forward:
Quick tips:
- Analyzing options can quickly turn into analysis paralysis if you don’t have some guiding principles about “what’s a good enough analysis?”
- I found that 1–2 ideas as answers for the main questions for each of the main 3–4 options are good enough for me for going further
Friday — 40 minutes
Finally, the next two exercises invite you to consider how you might bring strategy into practice and transforming the investment decisions you just made into concrete things. The two guiding questions are:
Given this strategy, what do I need to work on? — Projects
How do I need to adjust my habits? How would my days look like? — Day to Day
Here’s my personal experience of answering these two questions recently:
Quick tips:
- Same as for the other exercises, it helps to use a time limit (e.g. 20 minutes per each of the two questions) in order to focus on the essentials. Remember that a personal strategy is a guide for your way forward and not a super detailed plan, with deadlines, detailed resource allocation, checking for cross-dependencies etc.
- Many years I’ve focused only on the Projects area, ignoring the adjustments that I would need to make to my Day to Day in order to pursue the strategy that I’ve decided upon. I’ve learned that balancing the focus between these two areas helps my progress better than focusing on either one.
That’s it. Hope this practical guide will help you make sense of what’s happening around you, of what’s on your radar going forward, and how you might approach things next, making changes in what you need to do or how to approach day to day things in your life accordingly.
In a nutshell, crafting your own personal strategy — your guide for navigating the uncertainties going forward.
You can read the whole story of how I created my own personal strategy for 2021 here:
Your turn:
- How might you use this guide to create your own personal strategy?
- What thoughts do you have after going through this article?
I’m looking forward to reading your comments 🔜
Below you can find the visual recap of the Personal Strategy Sprint.
Enjoy strategizing!
Bülent
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