The Strategic Formula

Every executive believes they have a strategy. But when you ask them to write it down — in a single statement specific enough that a new executive could read it and know exactly what the company is and isn't doing — something surprising happens. They write completely different answers. One leader describes a business model. Another describes a competitive advantage. A third describes the five-year plan. The same words. Different meanings. And when people aren't aligned on what the strategy actually is, resource allocation, technology investments, and priorities pull in different directions without anyone realizing why. The Strategic Formula solves this problem by giving leadership teams a shared vocabulary and a diagnostic system that turns strategy from a direction into a testable formula. What You'll Be Able to Do Leave your next strategy session with a single precise statement — specific enough to test against every major decision that follows. Know whether your business is genuinely protected, or whether what you've been calling a competitive advantage is simply execution you'd have to sustain indefinitely. Translate your formula into executional priorities through Critical Success Factors tied to each element. Run strategy conversations where the team interrogates structure rather than defends positions. Know exactly where AI will press on your strategy first — the threat isn't evenly distributed across industries; it's distributed across structures. Find out whether your data strategy is actually compounding, or whether you're running a data project that looks like a learning loop but isn't. The System The foundation is the Periodic Table of Business Strategy: 35 elements organized into 12 business models, 6 competitive advantages, and 17 strategies — a structured vocabulary for naming exactly how any business competes. The Strategic Formula combines them: (Business Model + Strategy) × Competitive Advantage. The multiplication is intentional. Competitive advantage is the multiplier. Without it, results depend entirely on execution. Why Now The frameworks leaders know — Porter's Five Forces, the Business Model Canvas, 7 Powers — were built for different competitive eras. They're not wrong. But they're incomplete for a world where AI can compress cost structures in months. The Strategic Formula was designed for this environment — developed and tested in real strategic work since 2016, not assembled in response to the AI moment. Built for Practitioners Not a theory book. A practitioner toolkit: 62 diagrams, 14 tables, ready for offsites, board decks, and consulting engagements — without setup. The Critical Success Factors built into each element translate the diagnostic into executional priorities. The book gives you the diagnostic and the brief. Execution is yours. Strategy is a formula you can write down. AI disruption is a test that formula will face. This book gives you both.