• 159: Alex Smith on the battle to make business strategy better

  • Mar 14 2025
  • Length: 1 hr and 5 mins
  • Podcast

159: Alex Smith on the battle to make business strategy better

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  • Summary

  • This week we positioned our most powerful fan at the rear end of a corpulent bull in hopes of snaring the attention of legendary bullshit fighter, Alex Smith

    A strategist who’s set himself the mountainous task of extracting all the nonsense from business strategy, Alex is very much a breath of a fresh air in a field that can, at its worst, smell a lot like somebody’s done a poo… on a dead crab… in the drains of an abandoned laundrette… and then set it on fire. He is the author of a bestselling book on strategy, titled, with Alex’s typical disregard for fluff, No Bullshit Strategy. In those pages – and through Alex’s wildly popular LinkedIn posts – he makes a compelling case for businesses to look more closely at the decisions they make and wheedle out the ‘anti-strategic’ ones that are causing 99% of all pickles. So, in true Alex fashion, we probably could have just said something like ‘he helps businesses get stuff right, more of the time’ instead of all that nonsense about the crab and the laundrette. Ah well.

    This episode is dedicated to Alex’s wife who is the engine and foundation underneath everything.

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    Follow Alex on LinkedIn.

    Timestamps:
    (03:26) -     First Jobs and Failures
    (06:19) -     Reflections on Being Fired
    (08:53) -     Finding the Right Fit
    (10:46) -     The Challenge of Entering Advertising
    (12:24) -     Polishing the Pig: Agency Work
    (15:36) -     The Importance of Unique Value
    (19:08) -     Theory vs. Practice in Strategy
    (20:26) -     Defining Business Strategy
    (22:03) -     Value Generation in Business
    (24:16) -     The Role of Communication
    (28:04) -     The Hierarchy of Business Strategy
    (30:28) -     The Role of Founders in Strategy
    (32:10) -     Navigating Corporate Structures
    (36:15) -     The Myth of the Legendary Founder
    (40:05) -     Mediocrity vs. Strategy
    (42:58) -     Learning from Established Brands
    (45:11) -     Applying Strategy to Personal Business
    (47:30) -     The Shift from Freelancer to Entrepreneur

    Alex's Book Recommendations are:
    Zero to One by Peter Thiel
    Incerto Series by Nassim Taleb
    Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
    Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
    The Matter with Things by Ian McGilchrist

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