Stephan Schmidt - September 25, 2025

Vision and Strategy Made Easy

A hands-on guide for CTOs and founders to craft clear, actionable vision and strategy

Most founders, CEOs and CTOs have no vision or strategy. At most they have a product idea and beyond the initial launch are A/B or opportunity driven. Or they have a vision in some slides from an old strategy workshop that no one ever looked into again. That is full of buzzwords and corporate speak so no one remembers it.

What to do instead?

A vision and strategy are tools, not things to be put in a frame on the wall. A vision and strategy help everyone in the organization to make the right decisions and to focus on greatness. Coming to a fork in the road, should I go left or right? A vision and strategy guide that decision.

People fear vision and strategy. “I’m not a visionary!” is what I hear often. “I can’t do strategy, I’m not a strategy consultant!” or “Strategy is too much work!” and they have other things to do.

People think strategy is a strategy paper. Or a 30-page deck. Or something that happens once a year in a strategy offsite.

Strategy is simple. And you get better by doing it.

Lets start with a vision. A vision is where you want to be in the future. Where you are happy. A place that is self-explanatory and self-motivating.

The strategy is your plan to achieve your vision. That strategy can be a very short plan. It can fit on a restaurant napkin. It does not need to be a 30-page deck. A strategy is a plausible plan to achieve your vision - not more and not less. It has things that you need to have and milestones that you need to achieve.

An example.

Your vision is to bring people to the top of Mount Everest opening their minds. Your vision is not about you, but about others. It’s not about your product, it’s how you change the world and life of people. A vision is outward looking. This goes for both the business and tech visions.

Your strategy is how to get there. The things & people you need to have and the milestones you need to achieve.

To bring people to the top of Mount Everest,

you might need:

• Anorak jackets
• Sherpas
• Ice picks
• Tents
• Oxygen

and milestones to achieve:

• Arrive at Mount Everest
• Base camp
• Interim camp
• Advanced base camp
• North Col I
• Camp II
• Camp III
• Summit

This plan sounds plausible. Your strategy does not need to be correct, because you can’t look into the future. But it needs to be plausible. And as an exercise you can try to find wholes in your strategy and fill the gaps in your knowledge. But it doesn’t need to be correct: Assuming you want to go by truck from A to B, there are 3 milestones: bridges 1, 2 and 3. When you reach bridge 2, you find out that you can’t cross it with an 18-wheeler, because there is a construction going on. So you adapt your plan and wait for the construction to end, look out for another bridge or get two smaller trucks to cross the bridge. You adapt your strategy when new knowledge arises or circumstances change. You’re not chaning your vision to go to B.

There is more than one strategy to achieve your vision. If there is only one strategy, your vision might be not big enough. There is more than one route to the top of Mount Everest. And you can go with oxygen or without oxygen.

Vision and Strategy for CTOs

You derive your tech vision from your business strategy. Your vision is not about yourself, but outward, how you help the business strategy to succeed. This is an important point, where I see many mistakes being made.

If the business vision is to bring people to the top of Mount Everest, your vision needs to be how and what anorak jackets you provide. Or how you are able to provide the best effort. Or how you help business determine the best route to the top. Your vision is not determined by the company vision, otherwise you would build another company. Your vision is determined by business strategy.

The business vision could be to connect people with their ancestors. And the business strategy would be to build a system where people can add stories about themselves and an AI avatar their children can talk to.

What are the key achievements and critical points in the business strategy related to technology?

Your tech vision would now be something like “To achieve an authentic presence by creating a generative model of an individual’s unique worldview.”

A strategy would be:

1. Things and people to have

• AI Research team to pioneer the core persona technology and push the boundaries of generative personality models.
• Rapid Prototyping & Iteration Framework, enabling the AI team to quickly test new model architectures and get user feedback.
• A specialized MLOps team for real-time infrastructure
• Persona Validation Process

2. Milestones to achieve

• End-to-end data processing successfully ingesting a life story
• Breakthrough in stylistic modeling by producing a text-only chatbot with subject’s unique voice
• First Worldview Inference model, capable of answering hypothetical questions
• Closed beta of the first embodied avatar
• Launch and rollout of avatars

There might be more and different ways to achieve the vision. The important point is, after reading the strategy, from what we know, is it plausible to achieve the vision? Does it give clarity on what to do and where to move? Does it help to focus? Does it help to align? Does it help to prioritize? Does it help to make the right decisions?

A vision and strategy do not need to be complicated, they do not need to be a 30-page deck or a strategy paper. A vision and strategy give guidance and are a tool to focus, prioritize, align and for everyone to make the right decisions.