Nova's PicksThink Like a CEO: The Strategy Program
A growth plan for senior leaders responsible for direction-setting and results. Progresses from strategic thinking frameworks to operational excellence to building organizations that sustain competitive advantage.
1. Module 1 · Think Like a Strategist
Mental models for diagnosing competitive dynamics, finding durable advantage, and setting direction in an uncertain world.
Good Strategy Bad Strategy
Rumelt's essential distinction: real strategy is a coherent response to a genuine challenge not a list of goals. The clearest strategic thinking framework available.
Zero to One
Thiel's framework for building monopolies rather than competing in crowded markets.
The Innovator's Dilemma
Christensen's landmark theory of why great companies fail, understanding disruption from the inside so you can see it coming before it arrives.
2. Module 2 · Execute at Scale
How to translate strategy into daily operations — managing performance, making decisions under uncertainty, and building execution discipline.
High Output Management
Andy Grove's Intel playbook remains the most practical operational manual ever written: output orientation, 1-on-1s, OKRs, and decision-making all trace back here.
The Effective Executive
Drucker's timeless framework for making knowledge workers productive, effectiveness as a learnable discipline.
Thinking in Bets
Annie Duke's framework for decision-making under uncertainty, separating good decisions from good outcomes, and building a culture of honest analysis.
3. Module 3 · Build Lasting Organizational Advantage
The highest-leverage leadership work: creating cultures, structures, and capabilities that compound over time.
Working Backwards
Amazon's internal operating system, the mechanisms that drive one of the most consistently innovative and efficient companies in history.
An Elegant Puzzle
Will Larson's systems-thinking approach to engineering and organizational design.
Good to Great
Collins's landmark study of what distinguishes companies that make a sustained leap to greatness.
The Culture Map
Erin Meyer's framework for leading across cultures, essential for any leader managing global teams or working across organizational cultures.