The Strategy Paradox

A live tech podcast episode recorded in Austin, Texas, discussing real versus fake technology strategy.

The Strategy Paradox

True or false?

Brittany defines a real technology strategy as a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent actions.

• True
• False

The strategy that failed at Brittany's previous firm won an industry award for digital vision.

• True
• False

Brittany believes that an aspirational slide deck is the best way to run an engineering organization.

• True
• False

At Apex Payments, the successful turnaround focused heavily on payment reliability.

• True
• False

Industry judges usually give awards to boring, highly practical strategy documents.

• True
• False

Listen again and complete the sentences

• Kevin: Welcome back to Tech Deep Dive. Today we're joined in our Austin studio by Brittany, former CTO of Apex Payments in London, to talk about the ____ of engineering leadership.
• Nicole: Brittany, you've always argued that most corporate strategies are just fluff. Let's start with ____ : what's a real technology strategy anyway?
• Brittany: It's not an ____ slide deck full of wishful thinking. It's a diagnosis of our capability gap, a guiding policy, and coherent actions to close that gap over a specific time horizon.
• Kevin: That's quite a mouthful. How do you actually ____ something so dry when the board wants an exciting vision and a clear north star?
• Brittany: You resist the pressure to articulate a grand vision that nobody understands. You find the single ____ where small effort produces massive results, and you concentrate effort there.

Sources: photo by George Milton on Pexels