#BusinessAnalogy 004 - The Magnifying Glass & Strategy
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/businessanalogy-2-magnifying-glass-boni-aditya-cbgqc/
April 13, 2024
The Magnifying glass is an extremely powerful analogy and can be applied in many domains where focus is required.
Here is how Richard Rumelt the author of the book - Good Strategy - Bad Strategy used this incredible analogy to describe how it can be used to demonstrate strategy.
This is taken from Lenny's Podcast : https://youtu.be/4uWKEG0s9Kc
THE ANALOGY
Rumelt uses the magnifying glass to illustrate strategy.
There is a lot of confusing about what is strategy and what is not!
It is usually very hard for laymen to understand strategy and it is easy to confuse strategy with goals, plans, bold visions, none of which are actually strategy.
But what is strategy?
This is where the analogy comes into play.
Richard Rumlet uses this perfect analogy to describe what is strategy.
Strategy comes with a source of power, or strength, the source of strength is Sun.
The strength is usually dissipated, i.e. spread. We need a strategy that would actually focus this energy on a narrow target. This weapon that give strategic focus is the magnifying glass, which concentrates all the power into a very small target area and makes this red hot.
But at this narrow spot we need to place a target that is easily combustible i.e. a low hanging fruit to trigger the fire. This is the wool, or the dried leaf that is ready to catch fire.
The fire is the actual action that we seek.
Any proposition that cannot focus power into a narrow location is not really a strategy.
NOTE: This is only to understand what is strategy and it is not to understand how to create or execute strategy.
There are four elements in this analogy.
The source of Power - Sun
The Focus - Magnifying Glass
The Catalyst - Wool/Dried Leaves
The Outcome - Fire
Fire is also another elements which is what needs to be triggered due to this entire exercise, which is the required action/activity.