Strategy Begins When You Stop Trying to Be Better at Everything

A reflection from The Strategist by Cynthia Montgomery

This is part of the "Meller Highlights" series with reflections from my personal book highlights.

One thing I’ve been trying to do every day is to pick one idea from my reading and think about how to actually apply it.

Not just understand it in theory, but find a way to live it a little.

Today’s highlight: The Strategist by Cynthia Montgomery

“Strategy is about serving an unmet need, doing something unique or uniquely well for some set of stakeholders. Beating the competition is critical, to be sure, but it’s the result of finding and filling that.”

We talk a lot about strategy, in business, in life, in careers. But most people still treat it like a race. The goal becomes to win. To beat others. To move faster. To take the bigger piece of the market, the better role, and the higher salary.

But this quote reframes it…

Strategy isn’t about winning. That’s just a possible outcome.

The real point is to serve well.

To notice something that’s missing, in a market, in a company, in a team, in yourself, and decide to fill that space with something real.

In business, that means seeing what customers actually need that no one is giving them properly. It means doing something useful, not just something loud. It means having a point of view, not just chasing trends.

In your own life, strategy can mean asking a hard question: What’s the need I want to meet, with the skills I already have, or the ones I want to build?

You know what?

This applies to your career too. If all you're doing is trying to keep up, to match what others are doing, you're reacting. You're not playing your own game.

You’re just racing in someone else's lane.

But if you stop, think, and define what you want to be uniquely good at, things start to shift. You stop chasing. You start building.

You begin to see that success is not about being better in general, it’s about being better at something specific that matters.

And yes, competition exists. But beating others is a side effect.

The real focus is on showing up in a way no one else can.

The same applies to teams. When teams lack strategy, they work hard but aim low. They chase tasks. They check boxes. But when teams know what makes them useful, what makes them different, they start making better decisions. They say no to the wrong things. They focus. And the work starts to mean something.

So maybe this quote is a quiet reminder. A reminder that strategy is about deciding.

Deciding… who you want to serve? How do you want to show up? What do you want to be known for, not in theory, but in action?

That’s true for companies. And it’s true for people, too.

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself what real need you’re trying to meet, in your job, your work, your business?

Not just what you’re doing, but why it matters?

If you have, I’d love to hear how you’ve been thinking about it.

This is your daily tip, inspired by one of my highlights from The Strategist by Cynthia Montgomery.

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