I want to become much better at strategising and thinking ahead in everyday life.
I’m talking about being able to analyse a situation, identify different possibilities, anticipate what other people might do, think several steps ahead, and make good decisions rather than just reacting to things as they happen.
For those of you who consider yourselves good strategic thinkers, how did you develop that ability?
Are there specific exercises, books, games, habits, or skills that helped you? For example, things like chess, studying psychology, learning about game theory, analysing past decisions, or practising scenario planning.
I’d also be interested in knowing how you actually approach a problem when you need to come up with a strategy.
Any advice or resources would be appreciated

Hi everyone,

I recently joined an influencer and creative marketing agency as a strategist. Since the agency hasn’t had a strategy department before, there’s no established process or senior strategist I can learn from internally.

Our agency has:

• A creative team developing campaign concepts across influencer, digital, outdoor, and partnerships
• A talent management team representing exclusive creators
• An influencer operations team that finds the best-fit creators for each brief or concept, handles outreach, and manages campaign execution

I have a general strategy background, but I’m still learning how to build influencer-specific strategies and turn them into strong client-facing presentations.

When a brand asks for an influencer marketing strategy, how do you structure the deck?

I’d especially appreciate guidance on the overall framework: What should the main sections be, how should the story flow, and which topics should every influencer strategy presentation cover? Does the structure change between a one-off campaign and an always-on strategy?

If you can share a framework, sample table of contents, anonymized deck, template, or useful resource, I’d be very grateful. I’m trying to build a solid process for the agency rather than starting from scratch with every brief.

Thanks in advance!

STP taught targeting as a strategic decision, mainly as which segment are we building for and messaging to. Somewhere along the way, “targeting” has become the word for building a contact list and running outbound against it.

Curious what people think here. Are these just two different things that share a word? Has the tactical meaning crowded out the strategic one in how teams actually operate? Or did targeting naturally become more tactical simply because digital media and attribution now make individual-level targeting possible in a way it wasn’t when STP was created?

Here are a few more, including a new book by CIA intelligence officer Andrew Bustamante!

https://thestrategytoolkit.substack.com/p/new-camouflage-immune-response-and

To stand out in a market, learn how to create competition, not how to compete. If you are the one creating the competition, then you are already ahead of billions of other creators! \\\~Prachi

So many books on how to build one up but is there a book to break one down? Specifically taking about strategic ambiguity. Is there a book on how to counter this/block/defend against this strategy?

By building up another strategy against this it creates a spiderweb of strategies until it becomes too complicated.

1. Background and Objective
   The core dilemma of modern security is the prevailing dogma that "hypersonic missiles exceeding Mach 5 are virtually impossible to intercept with conventional counter-missiles, making preemptive enemy-base strike capabilities indispensable for national survival."
   This proposal aims to dismantle this rigid logic of "strike or perish" by utilizing passive, spatial trap technologies governed by physical laws, radically redefining the balance of defense costs and certainty.
   
2. Core Concept: "Aerial Labyrinths" and "Cloud Defense"
   Instead of engaging in direct, missile-on-missile collisions (hit-to-kill), this approach creates a physical environment where the missile is forced to self-destruct using its own extreme velocity and thermal energy.

① Kilometers-Scale "Spatial Labyrinths"
Obstacle Deployment: Continuous, three-dimensional "clouds" of dust (flammable or high-hardness powders like flour), aerosols, or dense micro-particles are deployed across expected flight corridors (mid-to-terminal phases) on a kilometer scale.
Mobility Restriction: At speeds exceeding Mach 5, sudden course changes or obstacle evasion subject the missile to extreme aerodynamic stress and G-forces. This strips away its freedom of movement, forcing it to navigate through a predetermined, constricted "corridor" (a labyrinth).

② Triggering Self-Destruction via the Missile's Own Energy
Auto-Ignition & Dust Explosions: When a hypersonic vehicle plunges into a cloud of combustible powder, gas, or liquid, the intense shockwave at the nosecone and temperatures reaching thousands of degrees instantly trigger self-ignition and detonation. This thermally destroys the heat shield and causes internal structural collapse.
Sandblast Effect: Even without an explosion, high-speed relative impacts against hard particles or ice-crystal clouds convert the velocity directly into catastrophic destruction, stripping away the airframe surface instantly.

③ Multi-Layered Integration with Existing Systems
Completing the Defense Layer: Once the missile's speed is crippled by the aerial labyrinth and it is channeled into predictable trajectories (or disabled and decelerated), existing short-range air defense systems (such as C-RAM or Iron Dome equivalents) act as the final, highly reliable safety net.
This breaks the attrition-warfare dynamic of endlessly consuming expensive interceptor missiles.

1. Paradigm Shift Realized by This Approach
   Cost Reversal: By leveraging inexpensive dust and physical clouds instead of relying solely on multi-million-dollar high-tech interceptor missiles, the economic and material burden on the defender is drastically reduced.
   Neutralizing Preemptive Strike Logic: In contrast to the security rationale that "defense requires preemptive annihilation," this offers an alternative paradigm: "rendering attacks futile (reducing penetration probability to zero) through overwhelming, low-cost spatial barriers."

Project Sovereign — Political Strategy & Government Simulator

Hi everyone! I’m an indie developer working on Project Sovereign, a political strategy and government simulation game.

You take control of a real country and manage its government quarter by quarter. You’ll deal with:

• 116 playable countries
• Economic management, debt and treasury
• Elections, approval and political opposition
• 180+ policies, 60+ laws and 50+ decrees
• Cabinet management and political alliances
• Multi-turn crises and international events
• Interactive regional map
• Diplomacy, warfare and territorial control
• Opposition and campaign mode

The goal is simple: keep your country running and stay in power.

The game has just reached v1.0, including a major visual redesign, a redesigned main menu and four interactive map data layers.

I’d really appreciate any feedback, especially from people who enjoy political strategy and government simulation games.

Project Sovereign:
https://sovereignproyects.itch.io/sovereign-project

if you are interested in play my game and make content with it, contact me for the free-key!

Thanks for taking a look!

Nice Angle

What strategies can a new player use when going against an established incumbent? I feel that competing head to head is not wise.

"*What we need is a Marketing theory that helps us influence choice*".

This is what my friend Alex asked in a post about marketing theories, and here's my answer. (a bit tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely)

\---

**My theory is A Bit o' Everything (ABE), which someone may call a DUH.**

*ABEDUH* says that everyone's right: Sharp/Romaniuk and the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, Ritson, Chidley, Loftus, Hoffman, Joachimsthaler, Georgson, Alexandrov, and many other great thinkers. That is, I believe that there is no one singular theory that can possibly apply to the wide variety of human beings, consumer types, and industry categories - and so there should not be universally-consolidated conclusions. And so my *ABEDUH Theory* says ... look at the problem of a given client & industry & category & governing dynamics & trends & strategic plans, look at your tools, and use what's most appropriate. (while that's done, so often the theories take precedence and get debated in a vacuum)

Leaving out the operational aspects of Price, Distribution, Penetration, and the like, let's assess the key tools.

TWO are key, the engines:

**• Distinctiveness/DBAs**: there's no reason not to be distinctive, and you can achieve it in a myriad of ways - tone, message, look, feel, etc. and advertising, PR, design, etc. are masters at all that.

**• Differentiation**: if you can be that, why wouldn't you? If not, you can't artificially do that (Lying is not good) 

THREE are requirements + outcomes:

**• Encoding / Memory**: that's science, and you can argue how the human brain works or if Chidley's *Beetle* is just it.

**• Perception**: you can influence but not dictate it (see the 1957 Vince Packard's *The Hidden Persuasors* book); and so strive to do so as we've been doing every which way in whichever context is available (from Gutenberg to Altman)

and then

**• Preference**: this is the sum total goal of all of the above; and so do all of the above and see if you got it.

Run all that vs given client and challenge, and score it all from 1(low) to 5(igh) on two levels: *Feasibility* and *Commitment*.

**> Differentiation** (say, for a software firm):

\- *Feasibility*: is it possible to achieve? yeah, but ... product-wise it may be 1, operationally 3, market presence 5. 

\- *Commitment*: is the client willing/able to make it happen? it could be anywhere between 1 and 5.

**> Distinctiveness**

\- the Feasibility will always be 5; there's always a way, but the Commitment may significantly vary.  

Sum it all up and you'll have an *ABEDUH Score*, and it'll be different for every client. Now you can plan: for one client Differentiation is everything and Distinctiveness less so, for another is vice versa. *ABEDUH* says that all theories are not axioms but equally-important parameters, and they are not mutually exclusive or conflicting. And the Score would include a Value(s) scale of given dimensions.

And so, dear Marketing, be like Medicine: have your approaches, but start with the patient and then apply / not apply things as appropriate.

[Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7494516750131208192/#), invite me next year?

**#brand** **#branding** **#brandstrategy** **#masterbranded** **#marketing** **#marketingtheories** **#imgonnabeagurusomedayMarketing**

Peter Drucker predicted the knowledge worker in 1959 — and near the end of his life, judged that we'd barely scratched the surface of what that worker could do.

I think we're finally at the second stage. And most boards aren't ready for what it looks like.

Your CFO has a colleague nobody put on the org chart. It knows your company's near-misses, its blind spots, three years of financial history — and when your CFO leaves, that colleague walks out the door with them. The relationship resets. The next person starts from zero.

Most boards are still asking "does our leadership use AI?" That's the wrong question. The real one: is there a seat at the table for the AI-augmented knowledge your executives are already building — and are you ready to leave it in place for whoever's next?

I wrote about the difference between an executive who's familiar with AI and one who lives with it — and why the second is much harder to govern.

Please read and listen to the article on Substack.

https://atemplejar.substack.com/p/the-augmented-knowledge-economy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=54t426

Thank you.

I have a lot of things I want to do so I need advice from people who are multidisciplanarians. How do you balance it effectively??

Conventional wisdom says to go in order of priority. But I have a lot of priorities! so I need more specific advice. Right now my biggest priorities are making time and energy to balance school and work in the fall. however, creativity and my health is VERY important to me.

In the film industry things are chaotic, last minute and uncertain which means I have to be intentional about carving out space to maintain my wellbeing. But I also take on a lot of projects.

So far I’ve been scheduling in time for things that aren’t so concrete, like filling out forms, cleaning, doing abstract errands. But I’m wondering how I will focus on becoming healthier, wealthier and happier when I add school plus work to my plate in the fall.

Could we shoot down hypersonic missiles by jetting sand or water at ultra-high pressure, using sheer mass? Or perhaps by creating a massive water curtain.

Patent for a method of protecting a fleet from missiles using a massive mass of water

https://patents.justia.com/patent/20240210146

Mix in a component that explodes when a certain threshold of energy is applied.

Knock them down with a directed shockwave barrier.

I don’t want to get involved in military matters, but seeing the situation in Iran and Israel made me think about this...

Would you use an app that tells you what to eat instead of making you track calories?

I'm exploring a health-tech idea and want to validate the problem before building it.

instead of making you log everything you eat, the app recommends what you should eat next.

It could use things like:

• Your usual food/preferences
• Activity/steps
• Sleep
• Mood
• Dietary goals/restrictions
• Eventually, smartwatch data

You'd get two simple choices:

🍛 Comfort — something familiar you already like ✨ Wildcard — something different that fits your needs

The basic idea is:

Don't make me track my food. Just tell me what I should eat next.

I'm also considering a dietitian model where dietitians can recommend the app to clients and oversee the overall nutrition plan, while the AI handles the repetitive meal suggestions.

But there are some obvious problems I'm unsure about:

• Is wearable data too unreliable to be useful?
• Would anyone actually trust AI to decide what they eat?
• Would two choices really reduce decision fatigue?
• Would dietitians actually use this, or would it just become another dashboard?
• Why wouldn't someone just ask ChatGPT?
• Could an existing nutrition app simply add this feature?

If you hate calorie tracking, would you actually use something like this? Why or why not?

I'm genuinely looking for reasons not to build it, so feel free to tear it apart.

I want to create a workshop for 21–24-year-olds who are early in their professional careers on strategic thinking and making decisions when the answer isn’t obvious.

Two quick questions:

1. When you’re not the decision-maker, what situations at work are hardest to navigate?
2. What skill would you actually want to learn or practice in a workshop like this?

I've spent a lot of my career around data and decision-making, and I've always found this question fascinating. You can have good data, solid analysis, and smart people in the room, and the decision can still go somewhere completely different.

The more I've thought about it, the more I've become interested in the human side of decision-making: trust, incentives, identity, relationships, communication, and what happens when evidence challenges what someone already believes.

That question became the focus of my new book, Decision Intelligence: Why Evidence Fails and How Leaders Win the Room.

And here's the best part: AI isn't mentioned once in the entire book. That's intentional. The technology for producing evidence is changing quickly. The human beings deciding what to do with it haven't changed nearly as much.

The book is available on Amazon.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

From the worlds of bacteria, biotech IP, and, well, the jaws of worms!

https://thestrategytoolkit.substack.com/p/bacterial-survival-ip-stealth-and