This manifesto is for those who want to change the world around them.
For those ready to change — by letting go of outdated ideas, paradigms and theories.
For those who develop themselves and develop the people beside them.
For those who understand: the strategist’s profession is a great honour and a great responsibility.
Why
The manifesto is meant to unite leaders around shared strategic values.
It creates a foundation for a common view of the strategist’s role as a distinct, significant function — one that serves the founder, the company and the CEO, balances present and future, and gives meaning to the operating core.
It channels energy into developing thinking and gives key principles and practical guides for decisions that lead to large-scale results and durable, meaningful change.
Strategy is not a stunt and not a monument — it is living competence of choice. The six principles below are how I translate that into daily practice.
I · Scale over relevance
Relevance to available resources is necessary but not sufficient for a successful strategy.
The strategist must think at scale. Scale requires resources to serve strategy — not strategy to serve resources.
We do not give up on something bigger just because we are told to “be realistic”. We ask: “What would have to become real for this to work?” What we envision is as real as what exists now. Through intent and action we create self-fulfilling prophecy.
Scale of thought is the basis for inspiring leadership. The strategist develops in the team a way of thinking that overcomes scepticism toward ambitious goals.
Limit: the strategist is not an idle dreamer. Even the most ambitious strategy lands at the level of action.
II · Curiosity over certainty
Confidence comes from expertise — it is the product of experience. Experience can plant red flags in thinking: “we tried that, it will not work”.
Curiosity helps you see the non-obvious, grants the right to be wrong, and directs critical thinking. Curiosity challenges authority and plays devil’s advocate against your own ideas.
Curiosity also stops you from riding hype and falling for empty ideas in pretty wrapping. The strategist knows: superficial knowledge is the illusion of understanding; true depth is born in search.
As a leader, the strategist creates an environment where curiosity is rewarded and doubt of the status quo becomes normal for the whole team. Curiosity points toward the non-obvious needs of those for whom we build strategy.
Limit: a strategist without experience and expertise is a talker and a fool.
III · Wandering over stability
Stability is a slow poison of fragility that kills many companies. To be genuinely antifragile, you must move in search of new horizons.
Good strategy is non-linear: the world is full of surprises; every player follows their own will without waiting for your reaction. The strategist is a predator who scents a drop of blood in a boundless blue ocean.
Wandering expands horizons and feeds scale of thought. All great discoveries are accidental and subject to chaos. As a leader, the strategist gives the team resources, time and freedom for such search — protecting them from pressure for immediate results. As a mentor — helps separate grains of ideas from the chaff of aimlessness.
Limit: wandering is inefficient and risky. Use common sense and real options so you do not burn all profit in experiments.
IV · Error over inaction
Strategic catatonia leads to missed opportunities. The strategist is not a perfectionist but a practitioner. Better to err and regret the error than not to act and regret that.
Good strategy is the product of wandering and experience — not endless study and analysis. Error is the inevitable price of a better strategy.
Errors cultivate love of uncertainty. Make errors, learn from them — and they will take you from “impossible” to “not tried yet”.
The strategist is not afraid to experiment and builds a culture where people are not afraid to make mistakes.
Limit: reflection is necessary when a decision does not require haste but an error could lead to catastrophe. Frenzy is not a strategist’s virtue.
V · Result over rules
Rules cement the present and can justify inaction. Managers are taught procedures, but you cannot write an algorithm that reliably creates strategy.
Strategy is change that breaks existing rules and boundaries. Only strategy gives meaning to new rules.
The strategist motivates the team toward a large result and takes authority and accountability. Rules, org-structure barriers and hierarchy are insignificant in the face of result.
The strategist leads through trust, not hierarchy. Rules are agreements that increase transparency — not religious dogma. Interaction to achieve goals matters more than procedure.
To be truly adaptive is to create rules for the work — not work for the sake of rules.
Limit: breaking rules must be conscious and justified. Breaking rules requires high competence. Flexibility is not an excuse for chaos or personal gain.
VI · Insight over data
Data is a seductive illusion of depth. Managers cling to the hope that with enough analysis they will see the path to a strategic decision.
Such paths do not exist: there is no data about the future. Relying on current metrics, we measure the past. Strategy requires a break with the past and refusal of the illusion of predictability.
Insight is not miraculous revelation but intuition grounded in unarticulated competence and sensitivity — cultivated over years of wandering: the art of seeing pattern where others see chaos, and sensing grand shifts in weak signals.
We do not abandon intent just because there is no ROI or we dislike the NPV. Option value is just as important a criterion. Leave KPIs to business planning. They are a tool — not the core of strategy.
Open the mind to weak signals and trust intuition.
Limit: data and analytics lie at the foundation of insight. After all, we also judge strategy’s success in numbers.
Conclusion
A stunt — for a quarter. A monument — in a folder. Living competence — in management.
The six principles are not a declaration for a stand. They are how I build the strategy function inside a company: from intent to the loop of choice, KPIs, data and review.
If you are a strategist, CEO or owner — save this. Forward it to whoever is responsible for your company’s future.
Next, the principles in practice — on /en/writing/. The full corpus, mostly in Russian, is at /writing/.