This document provides advice for thinking like a Chief Strategy Officer (CSO). It emphasizes solving problems at their root cause, prioritizing effectiveness over efficiency, having ideas before data, disrupting rather than optimizing, commissioning data if it's not available, considering unusual factors, and crafting an engaging narrative with drama rather than just a theatrical performance. The overall message is to think differently than the norm in order to create meaningful change and outstanding work.

1. Think like a CSO

2. Win business, lead clients
and create outstanding work

3. Safe looking people with
dangerous minds

4. Radical means solving
the problem at its
root cause

5. If you aren’t
solving the right
problem no
solution will be
right

6. True value comes from
disruption not optimisation

7. Prioritise effectiveness over
efficiency

8. Ideas first, data second

9. Hate orthodoxy
of any kind

10. It’s more important to be
interesting than to be right

11. Plan from within

12. God is not in
the detail
but in the
narrative

13. Think like a
lawyer

14. Never assert, always prove

15. Proof comes in many guises,
data is one of them

16. The more sources the better

17. If you don’t have the
data commission it

18. Never neglect the weird shit

19. You never present, you
always perform

20. Let them know
upfront they are in
for a good time

21. You need drama more than
theatre

22. Drama is in the narrative,
theatre is in the performance

23. Craft a hard start, never drift
into your case

24. Get them in the right place for
the work. In mind, body and soul

25. None of this counts for shit if
you don’t have the work