Design your strategy like an engineer builds a spacecraft

Building a strategy is like designing a spacecraft from scratch. You don’t simply pick components at random—you choose engines, fuel, navigation, and life support to work as a coherent whole. One project manager once told me about designing an unmanned lunar lander: “We had motors that spun solar panels, batteries that powered the antenna, and computers that guided descent. But unless each component’s wiring, timing, and mechanical mounts were perfectly tuned, the lander would never touch down safely.”

In business, your engines are talent, your fuel is capital, your nav system is data and planning, and your life support is culture and morale. Each must be logged, mapped, and iterated on. You might have brilliant marketers and a top-notch CRM tool—but if IT can’t integrate your sales leads into that CRM, your rocket sputters on the launch pad. That’s why you sketch every handoff: sales to operations, finance to R&D, HR to hiring managers, and you test each interface rigorously with pilots or dry-runs.

When you press “launch,” you need confidence that no hidden friction point will short-circuit your thrust. By treating strategy as design—locating every interface, tuning it, and retesting the entire flow—you shift from hoping you’ve coordinated well to knowing your configuration will carry you to orbit. And just like in aerospace, this systematic approach separates triumphant missions from aborted ones.

Start by listing every strategic component—people, tools, budgets, and alliances—on one sheet, then draw arrows showing how each feeds the others. Spot where friction might stall progress—perhaps customer data never reaches the product team—and tune that one interface, automating the handoff or holding weekly syncs. Then run a small pilot, gather feedback, and refine. This end-to-end test transforms a static plan into a living, flying system.