I'm a Michael Porter fanboy. If Comic Con put on an offshoot convention for strategic thinkers, I'd totally cosplay the famous Harvard Business School strategy professor. I'd dye my hair gray, buy some tortoiseshell glasses along with a tweed jacket and proclaim, "The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do," or, "The essence of strategy is choosing to perform activities differently than rivals do."

These two quotes come from Porter's seminal 1996 article entitled "What is Strategy?" and form the basis of any organization's strategy. It sounds simple, but it's not.

For instance, at your next strategy meeting, ask your assembled luminaries two questions:

• In the last 24 months, what have we consciously stopped doing?
• As an organization, what is the one thing we do so differently that normal people talk about it?

For the first question, chances are your team of senior leaders will struggle to identify anything until an awkward amount of time elapses, when someone slowly raises their hand and says, "Well, we finally got rid of traveler's checks!" On the next question, you'll likely get a finessed answer that tortuously attempts to explain how your mortgage or checking product offers outstanding value compared to the credit union down the street. With very few exceptions, most credit unions have a generic strategy without much thought put into trade-offs (e.g., saying no) or differentiation (e.g., doing things differently from your competition).