At a glance: a real strategy is one rule, not a longer plan.
Most small practices are not failing at any one thing; they are spread thin across all of it.
A strategy fixes that by naming the single constraint that is actually binding, usually not the obvious one, and setting one rule that forbids something and can be proven wrong.
You review it on the evidence every quarter, not against a five-year plan.
You can do the first pass yourself.
The hard part is seeing your own practice clearly enough to name the one thing that is stuck.
"When everything matters, nothing matters." Peter Compo, Wisepreneurs Podcast episode 62
Most people running a small practice are not failing at any one thing. They are spread thin across all of it.
A little marketing here, a process fix there, a new offer to try, a webinar to sit through, and the one problem that actually matters never gets the hours it needs.
Being busy feels like progress, so the scattering continues, and the practice stays roughly where it was.
I spoke with Peter Compo for episode 62 of the Wisepreneurs Podcast about exactly this. He spent more than twenty-five years at DuPont before writing The Emergent Approach to Strategy, and one idea from that conversation is wired into my brain.
Find the single obstacle holding everything back, and put your effort there before anywhere else.
Everything below is what that idea looks like when you point it at an experienced independent practice rather than a large company.
The shape of a strategy for one practice, after Peter Compo
Start with what the practice is actually for
Before you can set a strategy, you need an honest answer to a plain question. By this time next year, what does the practice have to be giving you, in money, in hours, in standing, and in energy?
Put real numbers on the money and the hours. A revenue figure, a profit you can live on, and a ceiling on the hours you are willing to work is an aspiration you can actually plan against.
A phrase like "grow the business" is not, because it never tells you when to stop or what to refuse.
This is where working for yourself in your fifties, sixties or beyond changes the sum. Energy and health belong in the aspiration, not off to the side as something to apologise for. So does the shape of the life the practice is meant to fund.
For many experienced practitioners the honest aim is not a bigger practice at all. It is the same size with better clients, better fees and fewer hours.
That to me is a complete and respectable strategy to focus on, and naming it saves you from importing an employee’s idea of a career ladder into a practice that was never meant to have one.
The bottleneck is one thing, and it is usually misread
Compo’s discipline is that at any moment one constraint is binding on the aspiration.
Not three priorities.
One.
Naming three priorities is a polite way of refusing to choose, and choosing is the work.
As Peter put it to me, when everything matters, nothing matters.
The test he offers is simple to say and hard to answer honestly: if this one thing lifted tomorrow and nothing else changed, would the practice move toward what you want?
Keep asking it until exactly one answer survives.
When everything matters, nothing matters.
Peter Compo, Wisepreneurs Podcast episode 62
The catch is that most experienced people arrive with the wrong constraint, because the obvious symptom sits on top of the real one.
Michael Zipursky put his finger on one version of this when I spoke with him for the podcast.
Early in an independent career, he said, people end up communicating what they think the market wants to hear, when it is not what the market wants to hear at all, and then they conclude that their marketing is broken.
The complaint is marketing.
The constraint is a message that was never right.
- People say the problem is marketing when it is positioning, because the market is still buying an old description of work that has since grown.
- They say visibility when the real gap is evidence, because there is nothing a prospect can find at the moment they check you out.
- They say pricing when it is the channel, because the fee only looks wrong against work that arrived through a race to the bottom.
- They say they need to learn new skills when the issue is recognition, and
- They say it is a marketing problem when it is relational, because too few of the right people are in a position to send them the right work.
That last one is the most under-diagnosed of all, and often the most important.
The named problem is rarely the one to solve
Getting the constraint right is most of the value, because a rule aimed at the wrong bottleneck is effort spent moving something that was never stuck.
A rule that rules something out
Once you have named the constraint, a strategy is a single rule that resolves it.
Compo is precise about what that word means. A strategy rule is one guiding line that decides what comes first when you are pulled in several directions at once, which for a small practice is most weeks.
It is not a plan, and it is not a goal.
- A plan lists activities.
- A goal names a destination.
- A rule decides, in the moment, between the things competing for your attention.
Two properties separate a real rule from a slogan.
- First, it has to forbid something. If you cannot name the work, the channel or the activity you will refuse in the next thirty days because of it, then what you have is an aspiration wearing a strategy’s clothes. "Become the trusted adviser for X" forbids nothing, so it guides nothing.
- Second, it has to be able to fail. You should be able to say, out loud, what evidence over what period would prove the rule wrong. A rule that cannot fail cannot guide you either, because you will never know whether to keep it.
Compo builds this straight into the wording, with an "until" clause: we do this until this particular thing tells us to stop.
The reason a rule has to forbid things is that the pull of the next appealing option never stops.
Compo describes strategy as a way to avoid seduction, the shiny objects that look good on the surface but do nothing for the constraint you named.
A rule that rules nothing out leaves you at the mercy of whatever turned up in your inbox this week.
I describe strategy as a way to avoid seduction: seduction about the things that on the surface seem to be good.
Peter Compo, Wisepreneurs Podcast episode 62
What good rules sound like
The wording matters less than the two tests, but examples make the shape concrete. These are illustrations, not prescriptions, and the right one for you depends entirely on which constraint you named.
- If the constraint is the channel your work arrives through, a rule might be that you only take work arriving by referral, prior relationship or your own published thinking, and anything that turns up as a profile and a price gets a polite no, whatever the fee.
- If the constraint is focus, because accumulated commitments have eaten the capacity your aspiration needs, the rule might be that everything you accept or publish this year has to feed one book or one offer, and work that neither feeds it nor funds it is declined.
- If the constraint is that too much of your revenue sits in work AI is making cheaper, the rule might be that you keep first-contact diagnosis and the judgement calls in your own hands, move the rest to collaborators or tools, and reprice around the part you kept.
That last case is the whole argument of my conversation with Ben Legg about getting out of the hamster wheel and designing a better one.
You’re working on the machine, not in the machine.
Ben Legg, Wisepreneurs Podcast episode 87
Notice what each of these does. It makes a Tuesday-morning decision for you without a meeting. That is the real test of a rule. If you still have to deliberate every time, the rule is too vague to be doing its job.
Strategy that changes as you learn
Compo calls his approach emergent, and it is the part experienced professionals tend to find most freeing.
You are not being asked to commit to a five-year mapping exercise you drew up when you knew less than you know now.
You are asked to be clear about the aspiration, honest about the one constraint, firm about the rule, and then to watch what actually happens and revise deliberately when the evidence tells you to.
Set two or three triggers in your own words for when to look again. If two referred prospects in a row balk at the new fee, or the pipeline sits empty for six weeks under a new channel rule, that calls an early review.
It does not repeal the rule on the spot, but it tells you the ground may have moved.
The rhythm that makes this work is unglamorous and cheap. A rule you can state, a short list of what it makes you stop doing, three or four moves for the quarter that each pass the rule, and a standing review every three months where you ask three questions.
- Has the bottleneck moved.
- Has any trigger fired.
- Did we actually follow the rule, and where we did not, why not.
A rule you keep breaking is not a failure to feel bad about. It is information. Either the rule is wrong, or the aspiration underneath it was never honest, and the review is where you work out which.
What you can do this week
You can do the first pass on your own, and you should.
Write your aspiration in one or two sentences with numbers in it. Do the honest work of naming the single constraint, and push past the first answer, because the first answer is usually the symptom.
Draft one rule that forbids something real and that you could prove wrong. Sit with it for a week and see whether it actually decides anything.
Two things help before you commit.
The first is a clear read of your financials, the actual numbers, because a rule that improves your standing while starving line five (profitability) is not a strategy you can afford. The five lines every practice runs on, and the four-minute assessment that shows you which one needs attention first, are on the website if that is the piece you are missing.
The second is a second pair of eyes on the constraint itself, because the hardest part is seeing your own practice clearly enough to name the one thing that is actually binding. That diagnosis is most of the job, and it is the part I do with people directly. The rule is easy once the bottleneck is right.
Compo’s whole approach fits in a sentence. Be honest about where you are stuck, set one rule for what comes first, and shape the path as you go. For a practice built on years of hard-won judgement, that is usually a better place to start than another plan.
Frequently asked questions
How is a strategy different from a business plan?
A plan lists activities and a goal names a destination. A strategy is the single rule that decides between the activities competing for your time, aimed at the one constraint currently holding the practice back. The plan follows from the rule, not the other way round.
How do I find the one bottleneck in my practice?
Ask of each candidate: if this lifted tomorrow and nothing else changed, would the practice move toward what I want? Keep going until exactly one answer survives. Push past the obvious symptom, because a marketing complaint is often really about positioning, evidence, channel or relationships.
Can I set a strategy for my practice on my own?
You can and should do the first pass yourself: write the aspiration with numbers, name the single constraint, and draft one rule that forbids something. The hardest part is seeing your own practice clearly enough to name the real bottleneck, which is where a second pair of eyes helps most.
Episodes referenced
Every Tuesday I send The Wisepreneur, a short letter for experienced professionals building independent practice: one usable idea a week. Sign up at wisepreneurs.com.au/newsletter
When you want a second pair of eyes on your own practice, the Positioning and Practice Audit is how I work with people: wisepreneurs.com.au/marketing-partnership