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Welcome to Plexodex This is a wiki for readers of Seth Godin's new book, THIS IS STRATEGY. Every article in the book has a number, and that number corresponds to a page on this wiki. The purpose of this wiki is connection and discussion. It's not for promotion or selling. Find an article and chime in. Thanks for being here.

1: Strategy is a philosophy of becoming 2: Four threads, woven together 3: What do people want? 4: The non-strategy of “Take what you can get” 5: Awaiting instructions 6: The elegant path is the most useful way forward 7: Not all elegant strategies are the same 8: Systems are unseen and persistent 9: We live in the solar system 10: Systems deliver value 11: The buildings or the roads? 12: The unseen assistant (and the mysterious vandal) 13: Can you see the river? 14: The collective 15: Successful systems 16: Real life isn’t LEGO 17: Two myths about systems 18: Built, natural, and complex systems 19: What makes a system? 20: The persistence of systems 21: From fine china to underwater headphones 22: Duncan Hines (and Nina Zagat) 23: All dogs are mixed breed dogs 24: U.S. News changed college 25: Where’s the meter? 26: Seeing (and changing) the chocolate system 27: Serious games 28: There are games in every strategy 29: We are all time travelers 30: Seeing time 31: There is a method 32: The heartbreak of an intuitive strategy 33: Hiding from a useful strategy 34: Low-hanging fruit isn’t 35: Rome was built in a day 36: One telephone is worthless 37: The desert island mythologies 38: Cities are contagious 39: Analyzing the last move 40: Strategy and tactics 41: Toward a strategic practice 42: Project work is different 43: You might need a strategy to 44: Slithering, with patience 45: Plants make people happy 46: Seat belts save lives 47: Airbnb was lost 48: Twenty-seven egg dishes 49: Esther changed the world 50: Shine a light 51: Big problems demand small solutions 52: “Getting the word out” (also known as “selfish shouting”) 53: Use, be used, or change it 54: Freedom is possible 55: Getting clear about the business model 56: And it flies 57: Passion and our business model 58: The circle of us and the circle of now 59: Selling selfish 60: Next guest, best guest 61: Seeing strategy clearly 62: A blueprint is an assertion 63: Sharing your strategy: The modern business plan 64: Intuition is strategy without narrative 65: The thing about effort numbered riffs.rtf 66: Resilience and leverage 67: It barely works 68: The minimum viable audience 69: And then what happens? 70: To kill all the whales 71: Not all needs have a market (yet). 72: Seeing the windmill 73: Without a strategy 74: Some reasons we avoid having a strategy 75: A framework for a strategy 76: Creating the conditions for change 77: Twelve slogans 78: Unseen systems and unintended consequences 79: We are not plankton 80: Strategic marketing 81: No time to waste 82: Strategy and aimlessness 83: “Should” might be a trap 84: Where is the blueprint? 85: Sooner or later 86: Strategy is the partner of freedom 87: The lottery is not a strategy 88: Nostalgia for the future 89: Doing our job or doing our work? 90: Tension first and above all 91: The fastest cyclist in the world 92: When did Apple become Apple? 93: When did Netflix become Netflix? 94: When did David Bowie become David Bowie? 95: What’s your strategy? 96: What does it mean to be a strategic thinker? 97: Tactics are not strategies 98: What’s a feedback loop? 99: Time isn’t free 100: Avoiding hindsight bias 101: Not the parts, the system 102: Thinking about ‘status’ 103: Seeing status in Hollywood 104: The output of systems 105: Our intent is altered by the system we’re part of 106: The birth of Afya 107: Perpetuating the scam 108: Toxic systems 109: The urgency of “no” 110: On being judged 111: Choose your customers and choose your future. 112: Choose your competition and choose your future 113: Choose the source of validation and choose your future 114: Choose your distribution and choose your future 115: News, ideas, and distribution changes 116: “Everyone” is elusive 117: What do you want? 118: What does it want? 119: The runaway conditions 120: Things that scale 121: Working for the system 122: Who is in charge? 123: Snapshots and movies 124: The day I met Derek Sivers 125: The emperor penguins, crowds and fear 126: If you want to start a fire 127: The five steps to widespread change 128: Sand Hill Road 129: 100 is a fine way to start 130: Failing to change the donation dynamic numbered riffs.rtf 131: Shun the non-believers 132: Understanding adopters 133: Time is the overlooked axis 134: Getting comfortable with a series of snapshots 135: Embrace the gulf of disapproval 136: Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow proves the point 137: Chasing the hype cycle 138: Seeing the chasm 139: The need for scaffolding 140: Scaffolding and marketing 141: The Catch-22 of leveraged systems 142: Treating different people differently 143: Shifting to the masses 144: Misunderstanding quality 145: The challenge in finding useful criticism 146: Being clear about “better” 147: What we ask ourselves when it’s our turn on the curve 148: Short-term and long-term games 149: Infinite or finite? 150: Scarcity or abundance? 151: Dominance or affiliation? 152: Paying it forward vs. paying it back 153: Maintenance, substitution, or possibility? 154: Games of skill, luck and privilege 155: Games with divergent objectives 156: Mutual enrollment and complex games 157: Don’t bet on games you can’t win 158: All of our strategies are all of our strategies 159: Grabbing the last doughnut 160: Systems thrive, and then they don’t 161: To get to New York 162: If it fits, you can ship it 163: Feeding the system 164: Scarcity and the drivers of a system 165: Scale and magic 166: How NPR lost to the podcast 167: Self-interest is self-evident 168: It’s easy to avoid the most important part of our job 169: It’s voluntary 170: “I will if you will” 171: Bringing strategy to marketing 172: Living in a van 173: Acorns sometimes become oak trees 174: Systems have multiple objectives 175: One way to solve the problem is to change the system 176: Interoperability 177: What does the system respond to? 178: The paradox of substitutes and uniqueness 179: Commodities 180: Understanding genre 181: Medium vs. message 182: Thoughts on pricing 183: Strategies require empathy 184: Dorothy and her crew 185: Everyone is always right 186: All persistent systems rely on feedback loops 187: The wildcard in every feedback loop is the delay 188: Systems + games + feedback loops 189: Embracing constraints 190: Who benefits? 191: Six system traps 192: The Moses manipulations 193: Resilient systems stick around 194: Trying to turn me into an addict 195: The challenge of false proxies numbered riffs.rtf 196: We see systems when they are forced to change 197: May I see the org chart? 198: The agent of change 199: Looking for the agent of change 200: The telegraph and the skyscraper 201: Cheese bullies 202: A brief history of jaywalking 203: What will I tell the others? 204: Who says yes? 205: If you want to use the system 206: The person in front of you is part of a system 207: Some of the ways that systems operate 208: Types of elegant strategies 209: Bringing change to a system 210: Luck doesn’t even out in the long run 211: Leverage and the exaggeration of strategies 212: Intent and side effects 213: Turbulence and systems transformation 214: Gatekeepers 215: Kinds of tension 216: “What will I tell the others?” 217: Two Tesla parables: Ludicrous and the clown car 218: Competitive advantage 219: Metcalfe’s law is waiting for you 220: The first rule... 221: Do vs. want 222: Exchanging the system is tempting 223: Revolutions are rare 224: The game belongs to the children who play it 225: The two unseen desires 226: The thing about cheaper 227: Compounding our tribal instincts 228: Substitutes and the race to the bottom 229: Seeking the invisible hand 230: Examples of systems living in tension 231: Which hat? 232: The weather report is a prediction 233: This might not work 234: Back to the rhino 235: Who controls the dice? 236: Who is waiting for you at the airport? 237: Understanding statistics and polls 238: Best practices and the status quo 239: Analogies and the problem with “almost” 240: Cheerleaders and coaches 241: Collapsing to the center 242: Understanding the 2 x 2 positioning grid 243: The blank of blank 244: Moving to the middle (or not) 245: Going to places the competition can’t go or won’t go 246: Where is everyone? 247: Getting the word out 248: Scaling better 249: Half a boat isn’t much help 250: Thrashing at the start 251: The last minute 252: Every yes requires many no’s 253: Empathy for the retailer 254: Bringing intention to projects 255: Successful projects 256: The three project traps 257: Communication with intent 258: Risks aren’t to be avoided 259: Constraints are a gift 260: What do you make? 261: Problems are opportunities 262: The simple hierarchy of decision effort 263: Optionality and undo 264: Great choice, didn’t work 265: Hidden decisions get moldy 266: Compared to what? 267: A quarter of a million dollars 268: Thinking about money 269: No regrets and the kinds of games we play 270: Why is it hard to talk about decisions? 271: Bad luck paralysis 272: Survivors are noteworthy 273: The regression toward the mean 274: Better decisions and better outcomes 275: Not making a decision is the easy path 276: Assets are tools 277: Assets over time 278: What sort of hammer should you buy? 279: Community action 280: The man who poisoned us all 281: The enduring myth of widespread self-control 282: Bringing a strategic approach to the most urgent system change of our lifetimes 283: Helping the market fix what the market broke 284: Harnessing the insatiable 285: The action we take 286: Indoctrination is real 287: The journey, not an event 288: Constant pressure and chiseling 289: Coordination failure 290: Asynchronicity is a superpower 291: Ignoring sunk costs: A simple But uncomfortable idea 292: What does “wrong” mean? 293: Tomorrow is another opportunity 294: Ignore sunk clowns 295: What to wear on Wednesday? 296: People like us 297: Questions that lead to strategies