Strategy Hacks
Strategy Hacks is Dale Williams's collection of small, sharp interventions - a single question or reframe you reach for when a strategy conversation is stuck, not a full framework you run end to end.
Reach for this when…
- A strategy conversation has gone circular and a full framework would take too long.
- You need one sharp question, not another two-hour workshop.
- The team is overcomplicating a decision that has a simpler frame hiding in it.
How to run it
- Name the actual challenge in one sentence before reaching for any tool.
- Find the specific hack that matches that challenge, not the one you know best.
- Apply it as a single focused intervention - a question, a frame, a constraint.
- Test it against real data in the room before anyone commits to it.
A worked example
Situation. Klara Novakova led Polni Druzstvo, a small agritech co-operative near Brno, Czechia, and her leadership meetings kept dissolving into which crop to expand next.
Applied. Instead of running a full portfolio review, she used one hack: 'If you could only sell three of your seven crops next season, which three?'
Result. The room answered in one sitting what a planning session hadn't settled across three prior meetings, and two crops got quietly retired.
The catch
A hack is a shortcut, and shortcuts skip analysis that sometimes needs to happen - use one where the group already has the information, not where it's avoiding gathering it. Overuse turns hacks into party tricks that stop landing. And a hack that becomes a ritual has stopped being a hack.
If you reach for the same hack every time, it has stopped being a hack and started being a habit you haven't examined.
Origin: Dale Williams