This is Strategy: Seth Godin’s Framework for Leaders & Strategizers

In a compelling session at G2 Reach, visionary marketing legend Seth Godin delivered a masterclass on strategy. It was my pleasure to introduce my longtime friend, who shared profound insights on how leaders can navigate change and make strategic decisions as technology continues to evolve and improve.

During his keynote, he shared concepts from his latest book, “This is Strategy,” which offers a new way of seeing and thinking about the challenges we face – reshaping how we approach problems, make decisions, and create change. 

If you missed his session at Reach, now’s your chance to explore Seth’s insights, which can catalyze any business's journey toward strategic success.

The evolution of strategy in tech

Seth, the founder of YoYoDyne (acquired by Yahoo!) and email marketing pioneer, emphasized that strategy isn't about tactics—it's about "a philosophy of becoming." 

At the core of his discourse, Seth unpacked the concept of the ‘strategizer.’ The strategizer is not merely a manager but a visionary leader who forges decisive choices for the future. In his words, “Strategy is distinct from management. It’s about leadership and making choices. You get to decide.”

He elaborated, "Management is using power and authority, your spot on the org chart, to tell people what to do. We're talking about leadership, about leaning in.” At G2, we are committed to being a trusted source of market trends and insights for strategizers, making Seth the perfect choice to headline Reach 2024.

The two fundamental questions

At the heart of strategic thinking, Seth presented two crucial questions every leader must answer:

• What's it for?
• Who's it for?

Essentially, what is the change we seek to make, and who are we seeking to change it for?

"These seem like easy questions. They're not," Seth emphasized. He cautioned against the common pitfall of answering "Who's it for?" with "anyone who will pay us," noting that such broad targeting typically leads to downward spirals in business performance.

The four threads of strategy

Seth then dove into the four threads of strategy that everyone should consider.

1. Systems

Systems, he noted, are typically invisible until they're under stress. We build systems any time we interact with one another repeatedly. For example, it would be incredibly difficult to re-invent how we educate our youth every four years and give them a stamp of approval or a grade when they reach the age of 20. So, instead, we invented the college industrial complex.

So, how does this relate to selling software? Consider that there used to be no way to sell people software remotely – customers had to physically go into a store that sold software. But what happened?

The system changed.

2. Time

"The now of yesterday is called yesterday, and the now of tomorrow will be now when we get there," Seth stated. Time means that everything we bring into the world will be old soon after we bring it into the world – it’s a continually evolving entity.

He posed a crucial question for strategizers: "Will the you of 5 years from now be glad you did what you're going to do tomorrow?"

We can determine how to create a strategy when considering time and its relationship to systems. Time obliges strategizers to think about the future implications of their decisions. 

3. Games

Strategy also involves understanding game theory—recognizing that business situations have limited players, outcomes, rules, and scarcity. It’s all about understanding your competition and the market at large.

If you understand game theory and that your move is going to be responded to, you can incorporate time into the choice you’re making – which is critical to strategic planning.

Seth added, "The game is the market, it's the competition, it's the context. We all are in a game."

4. Empathy

Perhaps most importantly, Seth stressed practical empathy: "You are marketing to people who aren't you, who don't know what you know, don't see what you see, don't want what you want. And that's okay."

Because of this, we can’t demand others come to where we are; we have to choose to go to them. If we don’t imagine the world through others' eyes, they’ll just leave. Which is why it’s so important to understand who it's for.

"If you can't empathize with your consumer, you can't market effectively," Seth reminded us. 

The power of the smallest viable audience

In challenging the common pursuit of mass appeal, Seth advocated instead for finding your smallest viable audience. The smallest viable audience is the smallest group of people that, if they supported you, it would be enough. He said, "If you can’t delight the smallest viable audience, you’ll never have the chance to delight the masses." 

Seth cited Photoshop as an example: "Photoshop only needed 5,000 cutting-edge graphic designers to decide that they couldn't live without it. And then over time, they could build an ecosystem and infrastructure of doing business that could thrive."

This shows us that marketing is so much more than aiming for a large audience. Filtering out your precise audience and contenting them is the real masterstroke in marketing strategy.

Key strategic principles for modern leaders

In his session, Seth outlined several crucial principles for strategic success, including:

• Status matters: People make decisions based on perceived status, especially when spending their money.
• Affiliation is crucial: "Who's to my left? Who's to my right? Am I fitting in enough? Am I part of something?" These questions drive user behavior and should influence product development.
• Big problems demand small solutions: Success comes through systematic, stepwise progress rather than dramatic leaps. We build processes so that over time, we can solve big problems.
• Scaffolding: Even small steps need to be taken to move a product, brand, or idea forward. "It’s not enough just to have a story—you have to earn the permission to tell your story," Seth said. 

Modern leaders must focus on earning permission to tell their stories to a few people who will then spread the word. Consumers will trust only the stories they’ve permitted you to tell them. That’s the key to winning their trust and their business over time.

The inspiration to persist

Glued to my screen during Seth’s session, I found his talk genuinely thought-provoking. Seth left us with a resonant thought: It's not the change that is hard, but our resistance to that change is hard. 

He also connected these strategy concepts to AI’s rising role in business, noting:  "AI right now is a feature. That's not going to be true for a long time because the same way electricity isn't a feature. AI is going to be all of it all the time."

If you missed Seth’s keynote session, you can catch it on-demand, along with all Reach sessions. You can also get your copy of his new book This is Strategy: Make Better Plans.