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Episode Summary
You’re running EOS or Scaling Up, you’ve got your rocks, your scorecard, your L10s humming. And you still can’t answer the question of why a customer is going to choose you over the guy across town in three years. That’s the gap I wanted to dig into with Greg Meredith. Greg runs Simply Strategic and he draws a clean line that most owners have never had drawn for them: your operating system runs the plays, but it doesn’t pick the game. Going from $5M to $10M is a goal, not a strategy. “We’re going to provide great customer service” isn’t a strategy either (the opposite is ridiculous, so it’s not a choice). A strategy is one integrated choice about how you’ll use your company’s assets to win a specific piece of high ground. Greg walked me through his nine keystones across three phases (analysis, plan, execution), and we got into the two he says are the secret sauce almost nobody else forces you to do: writing down your doctrines (the beliefs that become your decision matrix when the world goes sideways) and picking one of five winning positions instead of pretending you can climb all five mountains. We closed on a story about how I sold my old copier business: integration was the winning position, and the buyers literally couldn’t unwind us from those customers.
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## Top 10 Takeaways- A goal of going from $5M to $10M isn’t a strategy. It’s the arrow. The strategy is how you hit it.
- If the opposite of your “strategy” is ridiculous, you haven’t made a choice. You don’t have a strategy.
- You need one integrated strategy, not five sub-strategies for sales, marketing, ops, and HR.
- Your operating system runs the plays you’ve already chosen. It doesn’t pick which game you’re playing.
- Write your doctrines down before you need them, so when the world breaks you have a decision matrix instead of an argument.
- Greasing the wheels on decision making is one of the fastest ways to scale, and a clear strategy is the grease.
- Almost no strategy comes free. If you can’t fund it with people, time, and capital, you didn’t pick a strategy.
- Your assets determine what you can do. Wanting to play in the NBA doesn’t make you 6’10”.
- You can’t win on all five high grounds. Pick one: relative scale, integration, operational potency, preferred offering, or exclusivity.
- New product into a new market looks easy on a whiteboard and breaks most companies that try it.
Sound Bites
“You need one strategy that incorporates every aspect of your business.” (@00:09:13) — Greg Meredith
“The goal is action. When creating a strategic plan.” (@00:20:30) — Greg Meredith
“Almost no strategy comes free.” (@00:34:20) — Greg Meredith
“One of the fastest ways someone can scale their business is greasing the wheels on decision making.” (@00:36:00) — Greg Meredith
“Really thinking with that asset-based view is really valuable.” (@00:55:35) — Greg Meredith
About This Episode
Greg Meredith is the Chief Strategy Guide at Simply Strategic in Dayton, Ohio, a network of strategy guides that work with small and midsize business owners on getting to a real strategy (not a binder full of goals). Greg holds an MBA from The Ohio State University and a BSBA in Finance and Economics from Miami University, and before launching Simply Strategic he ran a consulting practice for a regional professional services firm. He’s also an owner-operator himself, with a small injection molding business and other ventures, which is why his lens on strategy is practitioner-first instead of academic. This is Greg’s second appearance on the show.
Resources Mentioned
- Simply Strategic — Greg’s strategic planning firm. — simplystrategic.us
- Greg Meredith on LinkedIn — Greg’s three-and-a-half-minute strategy story videos. — linkedin.com/in/gregmeredith
- A.G. Lafley — Former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, source of the “opposite rule” for testing whether a strategy is actually a choice.
- Jim Collins — the Flywheel concept — Referenced as Keystone 5 in Greg’s process.
- Ansoff Matrix — Four-box grid for organizing opportunities by existing vs. new product and existing vs. new market.
- EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) — Referenced throughout as the execution layer that sits downstream of strategy.
- Scaling Up — Referenced as another operating system in the same category as EOS.
Connections
Phase + Module:
- Module 1 — Ownership Goals — Where the bullseye lives before it ever becomes a plan
- Module 3 — Owner’s Playbook — The owner’s strategy work that sits upstream of any operating system
Milestones:
- Milestone 13 — Strategic Plan — The closest iBD milestone to what Greg’s nine keystones produce
- Milestone 12 — Five-Year Forecast — Where the strategy gets priced and stress-tested in the model
- Milestone 11 — Annual Budget — Where the resource budget keystone lands in dollars
Concepts referenced:
- Business Operating System — The execution layer Greg distinguishes strategy from
- The One Thing — Picking one winning position instead of trying to climb all five hills
- Theory of Constraints — Trade-offs and constraints as the engine of real strategic choice
- Capital Allocator — The owner seat that decides where the resources go once the strategy is set
- Value Growth Plan™ — The iBD container that strategy ultimately rolls into