What I learned about strategy from my mother
I open 5MSM for 2025 with inspiration from one of my major inspirations.
My mother, Gabriella, died this week, after a very short decline, aged 92.
Over her long life, she was the grateful recipient of many of the sophisticated social and public value supports that you, my clients and readers, provide:
a) humanitarian aid (the Red Cross (one of my clients today) assisted her to Australia as a refugee migrant from revolutionary Hungary when she was in her 20s)
b) income support (widowed in her 30s, she relied on government pensions and concessions after my father’s sudden death, and for most of her life)
c) aged care (from her 70s, she used all common types — first, a retirement village, eventually in-home care, and in her last 3 months, residential care)
d) public healthcare (she never had private health insurance, and used bulk billed GPs and public hospitals to treat her accumulation of health conditions and, ultimately, care for her at the very end).
In return, she made Australia a better place, by working hard as a housekeeper, raising two (mostly) productive sons (who in turn are raising several grandchildren) and, most of all, being an example of how to live a constrained life very well indeed.
And, she formed some of my earliest strategic mindsets. Here are just three.
As little as needed
My mother’s education didn’t last beyond primary school, as it was interrupted by German, and then Russian, invasions of Hungary in WW2. Yet, her capacity for insight and clarity always shone through.
A former lawyer, and fellow resident of her aged care facility, summed her up this way: “She didn’t have advanced education, but she had advanced intelligence”.
This meant that whenever I embarked on a new venture, worked with a new client, or won a significant project, she’d have me do two things. She wasn’t just interested in a glib way, she really wanted to be proud of me, so I’d always have to answer this question: “So, Andrew, tell me what can you do to help them that they can’t do themselves?”
Once she was satisfied she was clear on all this, she’d serve up the bean soup, schnitzels and pancakes, and we could all relax.
This capacity for cut-through helped me to articulate my value to my clients more times than she knew, even though she had limited concept of what I was working on.
Question: How can you express your value proposition in the simplest and most compelling language possible?
Ask the best questions I can
Most kids ask their parents endless ‘why’ questions. But, in my family it was the reverse. My mother had never heard of Socrates, but she was a master of Socratic questioning.
She always wanted to understand consequence and causation:
“What will happen if X happens?”
“Why did X happen in the first place?”
I had to work hard in my conversations with her, to tease out the threads of consequence and causation. Her curiosity knew no bounds. Just in the last weeks of her life, I recall her asking deep questions about why basketball stars are worth $50m a year, why consciousness arose, and why some people in her aged care village got literally no visitors throughout an entire year.
I have hypotheses about all of the above, but few certainties, and this is what made our conversations so vibrant. It’s also why my son, Jasper, said, “You know, hardly any of my friends have such interesting grandparents”.
Question: What are the most powerful questions about consequence and causation that you should ask?
Focus on the end game
Mum had two standard diagnostic questions to ascertain the value of any effort, especially mine:
“Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Are you happy?”
Some parents are concerned about status, about money, about achievement and progression. Not Gabriella.
These questions did two things. From my 20s to my 40s, I’d have the normal anxieties about status, money and achievement, but she’d trump it by introducing this uber-criterion: None of the others matter if this condition is not met.
It also meant that, as I got older, I’d deliberately engineer projects and prospects so that they were enjoyable, and made me happy. My work increasingly became a self-fulfilling prophecy to the power of a deeply satisfying vocation.
Question: Are you enjoying yourself? Are you happy?
We return to regular programming next week, but I hope these snippets of Gabriella’s life wisdom might influence your own outlook on the world, at least a little.
Please click the heart if you’re moved in any way by today’s 5MSM and I’ll see you next Friday.
Andrew
Thanks SO much to everyone who took the time to appreciate Gabriella, and especially to leave a comment here. I've re-read them many times, and it's a particularly effective grief therapy to do so.
I'm feeling overwhelmingly positive about the mark she made on everyone, including me, and even her way of exiting this reality at the end of almost a century. May we all have the privilege of mourning the loss of people who help make us our best selves.
Andrew,
Sending you our sympathies as you celebrate your mother’s life. Thank you for sharing what she taught you. Thus, she has taught us as well.
Phil