Pure Strategy is strategy without excess.
What passes for strategy consulting these days is embarrassing. It’s mediocrity hidden behind fluff.
Executives suffer the consequences of strategy fluff.
Nowadays strategy work is far too obsessed with tools and frameworks. Strategists narrowly focus on following models and templates. Lost is the art of genuine strategic thinking.
Executive leaders are the ones who end up suffering from this. Instead of clarity, you get clutter. Instead of reality checks, you get reinforced beliefs. Strategy services have become a game of over-kill, over-bill, and under-deliver.
Worse off is that this performative version of strategy has become so ubiquitous that executives have just gotten used to it.
Pure Strategy subtracts excess and restores the essence.
Pure Strategy emphasizes three core features that create the conditions for genuine and befitting strategy:
1. Clear-Sightedness
seeing reality clearly as it is, not as you want it to be
2. Productive Skepticism
taking a skeptical view of your own work so that it strengthens your efforts
3. Multi-Time-Horizon Thinking
juggling the various time horizons that your work will impact and be impacted by
With Pure Strategy you get:
honesty that is as rare as it is helpful.
You don’t get: templated thinking.
Hi, I’m Zaid.
With 15+ years of experience in strategy consulting, I provide pure strategy, not performative strategy.
This service is for executives who:
- are tired of being sold on strategy tools and frameworks that repackage the same old thinking
- dissatisfied with the quality of strategy they get from consultancies and agencies, and the excess waste
- are mature enough to embrace an honest take
This service is not for executives who:
- have a preference towards a specific strategy process or framework
- use strategy work to prove existing beliefs or pre-made decisions
- take strategy advice from LinkedIn seriously
Sound refreshing? If so, let’s chat about your challenges and how Pure Strategy can help.
zaid@purestrategy.ca
There’s a few things you should know about how I do pure work:
- I work with one final decision maker only (executive or senior leadership level)
- I’m a one-person team, no sub-contractors
- I keep a distance from your culture, politics, bureaucracy, etc. so that I stay pure and untainted
- I work at the pace that enduring strategy requires, with a minimum 6 months scope, but preferably longer
- I develop bespoke strategy that fits the assignment, not the framework
- I schedule the work according to reality, not wishful thinking
- I work with your operating constraints, but I do challenge them
- My work is priced by output and its value, not hours
- I’m not financially incentivized to do make-work, so I make it clear what’s needed and what’s not
I do my best, more pure work as an Antagonist Strategist.
That means I make critique useful.
Here’s some examples:
- “If you want to survive, here’s a way to navigate the difficult tradeoffs” – a custom tool that helps higher-ed executives make better and more strategic decisions.
- “These are the table-stakes that must be in place before you expand in new markets” – an expansion strategy for a commercial bank.
- “Here’s how much more it’ll pay off if you build the foundation quietly for two years rather than trying to make a splash now with little to show” – a roadmap for a newly developed archival institution.