An Explicit Strategy Increases Your Probability of Success

Collin Rusk
8 min readJun 19, 2021

People constantly make decisions. Some of those choices are regrettable and others not. The lamentable judgements receive the most reflection from human beings. A person tends to wonder how he came to those verdicts. Yet, many disastrous rulings have no traceable history. They are black boxes. An individual cannot see inside them to review how he made those settlements. Those calamitous decisions cannot be studied, preventing interested parties from improving their success rate. Those people need a methodology. A strategy provides a pathway to victory. Yet, triumph does not require an explicit approach. An unambiguous plan is not necessary for prosperity, but a clear-cut scheme does improve a person’s likelihood of achievement.

Success can be obtained, without a strategy, by an individual. Human beings can make effective decisions, using an opaque system. A competent scheme does not even require the deciding party to be consciously aware of it. A blueprint built around intuition can bring prosperity. A hunch can lead to extremely beneficial judgements. A conclusion drawn from the gut can bring a tremendous boon. The verdict a person senses to be correct sometimes delivers amazing blessings. Instinct can be accurate. An individual can simply have a feeling about a person or a situation, and he can be right in that sentiment. Intuition is occasionally an effective guide for decision-making. Human beings can obtain success, without a strategy.

An approach is not necessary for victory, but an explicit method does improve a person’s likelihood of prosperity. Triumph can be achieved through hunches. Yet, gut feelings can also lead to inexplicit failures. A person’s intuition is a black box. When those instincts result in sound outcomes, an individual accepts those results, and he moves on. When a person’s hunches fail him, he feels clueless about his misstep. That failure cannot be examined, leaving the afflicted party powerless. Yet, a human being with a strategy is not helpless, in the face of his shortcomings. An explicit approach is not an opaque machine. An individual can examine, adjust, and even test that apparatus. A methodology can be analyzed and tinkered with, in order to improve its performance. The outcomes from a clear-cut scheme can be enhanced by a person. Human beings do not need a plan to achieve success, but they do require a strategy to increase their likelihood of victory.

An identifiable approach increases an individual’s chance of prosperity by highlighting the otherwise-missed aspects of a decision. Yet, a complex judgement still has readily visible elements. For example, the price of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a blatant selection factor for those deciders in the market for such a product. Those choosers can use their intuition to find a verdict’s obvious facets such as cost. However, some of a settlement’s features are subtle. They are only apparent, through close examination. For example, a close study of each ERP package reveals several inconspicuous elements such as the value delivered by each feature and a system’s fit for an organization’s needs. An institution aware of those aspects makes better decisions than one who is unaware. An establishment becomes cognizant of a choice’s hidden factors, if it conducts a close examination. A devoted checkup is a byproduct of an explicit strategy. An identifiable approach increases an individual’s odds of success, because a clear-cut scheme highlights a verdict’s subtle features.

Inobvious elements and awareness of them are only a stepping-stone on the path to improved prosperity. That route requires consciousness of inconspicuous facets. Those aspects can be consequential to a decision. For example, an ERP package’s fit for an organization might distinguish a value-producing product from a benefit-destroying one. That factor could be an essential element in the selection of that commodity. An inferior asset is a more likely choice, if a person is unaware of certain impactful features of a judgement. A successful verdict results from awareness of unobvious aspects, because the decision is conscious of all consequential features. However, recognition of poignant factors is only an initial step. Beyond that introductory move, the path towards prosperity requires an examination of relevant facets. Simple possession of the applicable viewpoints does not lead to successful decisions. Victorious choices require both the realization of all pertinent perspectives and the analysis of those elements. Awareness of inconspicuous features is only a stepping-stone on the route to increased success.

Beyond the initial waypoint, the highway to triumph has rest stops demanding the examination of a choice’s important factors. A judgement of any complexity has myriad facets and pieces of knowledge. Those aspects and that information cannot be sifted through, using an individual’s intuition. A person must conduct an intentional study to square the circle of such an intricate undertaking. An unusually tricky verdict can become unwieldy, even for the instincts of the extremely bright. A brilliant human being cannot untangle the yarn ball of factors involved in a core IT question, using only his gut. Hunches miss inobvious features of a settlement such as organizational fit, and those guesses often elide analysis of impactful elements such as the value of individual capabilities. Those facets could be the difference between a successful decision and an unsuccessful one. Triumphant judgements require a person explicitly work through his thought process. An individual must conduct an examination of a choice’s consequential aspects to be likely to stay on the road to victory.

The path to prosperity is maintained, in part, by an explicit strategy, which allows a person to conduct a review. An obvious approach facilitates a study by providing a framework. That scaffolding frequently demands an audit of a decision’s impactful elements. When making a choice, an individual might not know which factors are important or what their effects are, so an interested party conducts a checkup to gather that information. That inquiry is executed, within the skeleton of a methodology. A clear-cut technique demands an investigation, because a plan requires the knowledge an examination provides. Without an obvious scheme, a person might not think to conduct an audit. That study’s insights are facilitated by an explicit strategy.

A defined approach not only greases the wheels for the collection of observations, but it also permits experimentation, in a systematic way. Trial and error can be implemented, without an obvious methodology, by an individual. Any human being can run a test and check the result. However, the outcome might not be clear. Moreover, that effect’s cause might not be particularly apparent. For example, a person selects players in a draft (e.g., NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.), and he wants to run an experiment with a particular pick. That individual needs to understand the consequences of his attempt, and he must grasp whether his trial led to those observed effects. Without that knowledge, a human being cannot discern whether a test had any impact. To see an experiment’s influence, a person needs to execute a trial, in a systematic way. A methodical approach is facilitated by the use of an explicit methodology. A clear-cut technique gives a specified individual a way to track results and a means to alter a confined area of his process. For example, a defined approach for drafting players specifies the metrics for differentiating one athlete’s career from another. An explicit procedure describes the means for picking those competitors, in enough detail for a person to change a particular piece, with localized effects. An individual can explore systematically, with a clear-cut methodology.

A demonstrable process gives a human being a channel for carefully making adjustments. Yet, alterations can be made without an obvious scheme. A person can make modifications to what he does, absent a clear-cut plan. However, that individual cannot guarantee the impact of his changes, without a defined system. A demonstrable approach gives an interested party awareness about what he is altering. A human being can modify his behavior, but he might not be cognizant of his changes. If those alterations succeed or fail, that person has no understanding of cause and effect. Without knowledge of origin and outcome, an individual cannot implement new insights, without experimentation. Those tests cannot be run systematically, without an explicit strategy. A clear-cut method allows a human being to integrate novel expertise meticulously. Otherwise, innovative theory is incorporated carelessly. For example, a person might have an insight stating that positional players with several above average tools have a higher wins-above-replacement (WAR) floor than athletes reliant on one particular ability. That judgement could be assimilated into an individual’s process, but that intuition might not be clearly blendable with an ad-hoc process. An interested party would not know what to add or modify, so he would resort to arbitrary changes. For example, team personnel deem an otherwise unsatisfactory player desirable by fiat, not through any system, metric, or past performance. Such specific requirements, actions, and decision flows are the hallmark of an explicit strategy. Those elements allow a person to mix novel insights carefully into a clear-cut methodology.

A defined approach ensures a person’s decisions follow his assessments. Conclusions should flow naturally from appraisals, but choices are not always the result of rational calculations. For example, a person knows a salad is the superior dietary option, yet he finds himself eating a Big Mac. His selection did not reflect his conscious reasoning. His verdicts were not constrained by his own internal assessments. For settlements to be shackled to verdicts, an individual must have a clear-cut process. That procedure demands specific steps, prior to making a decision. Those points force a human being to work from his intuition to its natural conclusions. An explicit method’s phases necessitate that a person reconcile his assessment that he order a salad with his innate desire to purchase a Big Mac. While a delicious sandwich might ultimately be the selection, an individual can know his choice followed his own appraisals, because he followed a procedure that forces him to resolve his internal contradictions. Such discrepancies do not have to be resolved, in an ad hoc system. A defined approach ensures that an interested party follows its own appraisals, by forcing it to iron out its inconsistencies.

A person does need not a strategy to achieve success, although having one increases his likelihood of doing so. A methodology highlights a decision’s unnoticed aspects. Yet, those factors are only a stepping-stone on the route on to prosperity. The road to triumph demands examination of a judgement’s overlooked elements. That checkup is facilitated by an explicit approach. A clear-cut system also expedites experimentation. Those tests yield insights. That knowledge can be integrated carefully, using a demonstrable scheme. An obvious strategy also ensures that decisions reflect a person’s assessments. Any individual who desires to learn how to develop and implement a methodology should read future articles.

Follow ExperTech Insights on Twitter and subscribe to its Substack newsletter.

This article originally appeared in the Strategy Construction Journal hosted by ExperTech Insights.

--

--

Collin Rusk

Software Architect with a specialty in enterprise systems and founder of ExperTech Insights (https://expertechinsights.com)