My Six-Year-Old Taught Me Strategy
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My Six-Year-Old Taught Me Strategy
It was a weekend at our beach house. Low tide. The kind of morning made for a long walk along the shore.
My son Rashed was six years old at the time. He was born with cerebral palsy, and walking — real walking, long distances on uneven ground — was something his medical team encouraged and that required real effort and determination from him.
He came up to my room while I was on my laptop, deep in strategy work. He stood at the door and said: "Come on, Baba. Let's go."
I closed the laptop and went.
The question I wasn't ready for
As we made our way down to the beach, he asked what I had been working on. "Don't worry about it," I told him. "Just some strategy stuff."
He looked at me and asked, with the complete seriousness that only a six-year-old can manage: "Baba, what is strategy?"
Here I was. Two decades of experience. Harvard. INSEAD. And my six-year-old son was waiting for an answer.
I decided to try something. I asked him: "Why do we take these long beach walks?"
He said: "Because one day I want to reach Beach House Number One." That was a landmark several miles up the coast — visible on clear days, almost mythic. He had talked about reaching it for months.
"Is that easy?" I asked.
He thought about it. "It's not easy. We might never get there."
"Good," I told him. "That's your vision. A vision gives you two things: direction and inspiration. It tells you which way to go, and when you fall down — and you will fall down — you look up at it and it gives you the will to get back up."
He nodded. He understood exactly what I meant.
Then he defined strategy — better than most executives I know
I asked: "What do we need to accomplish today to get a little closer to it?"
He pointed up the beach. "We need to get to that slipway and cross it safely."
"Good. That's our mission. Now — how do we do that?"
And here is where I want you to pay attention. Because what came out of my six-year-old son's mouth was the clearest expression of strategy I have ever heard:
"We need walking poles. Water. Saltwater shoes with good grip. Hats and sunglasses. We'll walk down closer to the water because the sand is harder there and we won't get tired as quickly. And when we reach the slipway, we'll cross it sideways — so if one of us falls, we can catch ourselves."
I looked at him. "Rashed. That is a strategy. You have just described your resources, your route, your risk mitigation, and your execution approach. You know more about strategy right now than most executives I have ever sat in a room with."
We walked. We reached the slipway. We crossed it. Mission accomplished. We took a water break.
Then came the lesson I didn't expect
I made a mistake. I dropped an empty water bottle on the beach, intending to pick it up later. "Too many things to carry right now," I said.
Rashed stopped walking.
"Baba, please pick it up."
"I can't right now."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Then let's go back. If doing this turns our beach into a garbage yard, I don't want to do it. Let's go back."
We went back. I picked up the bottle.
And I told him: "That, Rashed, is core values. They come from the deepest part of who you are. You don't negotiate them. You change your plan before you change them. And when someone asks you to choose between your values and your goal, you choose your values — because a goal reached by betraying your values is not worth reaching."
He nodded. He already knew. He had just demonstrated it.
What strategy actually is
That beach walk taught me more than any course or certification I have completed.
Strategy is not complicated. It is not a privilege of the educated or the credentialed. It is a natural human capacity: to see a destination worth reaching, to make a plan for getting there, to adapt when conditions change, and to refuse to compromise on what you stand for.
In one morning, a six-year-old with cerebral palsy on a beach in Kuwait gave me the clearest definition of all three foundational elements of strategy I have ever encountered:
Vision: Beach House Number One. Not easy. Maybe unreachable. But it tells you which way to go and gives you the will to get back up when you fall.
Mission: Safely crossing the slipway. Specific. Achievable today. A clear measure of done.
Strategy: Walking poles, harder sand near the water, crossing the slipway sideways. Resources. Route. Risk mitigation. Execution approach.
Core values: Go back and pick up the bottle. Non-negotiable. You change your plan before you change them.
If you cannot explain strategy to a six-year-old, you do not truly understand it yet.
Why this matters for your business
The TheStrategist.me method starts exactly where Rashed started that morning: with your belief system. Your core values. Your vision. Your mission. Before you analyze competitors, before you build a strategy map, before you set OKRs — you confirm what you stand for and what you are trying to accomplish.
Because a strategy built on a weak or absent belief system is just a plan. And plans fall apart the first time conditions change.
Rashed's strategy that morning held up not because the route was perfect, but because he knew exactly what he was trying to accomplish, how he was going to do it, and what he was not willing to compromise. That combination — mission clarity, a real plan, and non-negotiable values — is what makes strategy something an organization can actually execute.
Rashed figured that out on a beach at six years old.
The rest of us just needed a long walk to remember it.
Ready to build your strategy the right way?
Rashed's beach walk covered the entire foundation of strategy in one morning: vision, mission, strategy, and core values — in the right sequence, for the right reasons.
The TheStrategist.me OS gives you the same clarity for your business. Twelve sequenced processes. Thirty-six tools. A method that works for a multi-billion dollar organization and a seven-person startup alike. Your own strategy coach, available 24/7.
Abdulla Al-Awadi is the founder of TheStrategist.me, Magatier, ESSAM.AI, and Chief Strategy Officer at KIB. The TheStrategist.me OS gives business leaders access to the same 12-process method — structured, sequenced, and built for clarity. Start here.