Four thinking habits that separate natural strategists from everyone else

Executive overview

Most businesses do the same things as their competitors and wonder why they get the same results. Execution quality no longer creates an edge — post-AI, everyone can execute to a high standard.

Natural strategists aren't smarter or better educated. They hold four default assumptions about business that most leaders never internalise.

The compounding advantage of contrary, supply-conscious, value-creating thinking is nearly unassailable through best practice alone.

Do different things, not better things

• The real version of "insanity" is doing the same things as competitors and expecting different results.
• Most CEOs cannot name one big thing their business does that competitors don't — answers dissolve into culture or execution micro-differences.
• Pre-AI, accidental differentiation existed; now everyone executes well, so every advantage from doing things "right" has evaporated.
• Natural strategists are contrarians by disposition — they look at what the category does and deliberately don't do it.
• Daily question: What is one big thing we are doing that no one else in our category is?

Value creation is not problem solving

• "Solve customer problems" has won the algorithm popularity contest — that doesn't make it a universal truth.
• Value creation means producing something people want that didn't exist before, regardless of whether it fixes a problem.
• Disney World, Lego, and Rapha weren't responses to unmet needs — they invented experiences and identities from nothing.
• Problem-solver mode narrows thinking to friction, NPS scores, and "how do we make this less bad?"
• Natural strategists ask: What could we bring into existence that would change how people see this category?
• Diagnostic question: What would the world miss if our business disappeared tomorrow?

Only is better than best

• Every business is governed by two forces: supply (competition) and demand. Both determine whether you win.
• Most leaders obsess over demand; almost none pay serious attention to supply — the lever that determines whether demand converts.
• High demand plus high supply = commodity. The two cancel each other out regardless of product quality.
• Pre-2023 content creators and pre-AI software builders had edges not because they were great, but because supply was low.
• AI has collapsed supply scarcity in content and software; cold calling died the same death when predictive dialers and offshoring made it abundant.
• Natural strategists subconsciously ask: Is what we offer abundant or scarce? If abundant, the game is already lost.
• Honest test: Would your competitors claim they also offer what you offer? If yes, you're not unique.

Innovation comes from sacrifice

• Every category has sacred beliefs — things treated as essential that incumbents would never abandon.
• New ideas become visible only when you deliberately give up something the category considers fundamental.
• Pre-Ikea furniture sacred truths: assembled delivery, home delivery, real wood, salesperson assistance. Ikea crossed off all four.
• Each sacrifice unlocked something competitors couldn't access: flatpack → cheap shipping → global scale → prices nobody could match → a new category of accessible modern design.
• The pattern repeats: Uber (no cars), Monzo (no branches), Southwest (no business class) — each sacrifice opened territory the incumbents couldn't enter.
• Competitors literally cannot see the ideas that live on the other side of a sacred assumption they've never questioned.
• Most leaders nod at this principle, then walk back to their desk and refuse to give anything up.
• Hardest daily question: What am I willing to let my competitors just have for themselves?

Putting the four assumptions together

• The four questions work as a daily operating system, not a one-off strategy exercise.
• They compound: each contrarian, supply-aware, value-creating, sacrifice-willing decision builds on the last.
• The goal isn't to make business easier — it's to stop playing it the hardest possible way without realising it.