← Executive · Practitioner

Knowledge material · ~6 min read

Strategist · Practitioner

You run programs across domains.

Overview

Programs are projects that don't end. As a Practitioner Strategist you manage vendors who outlast your projects, build teams that outlast individuals, lead incidents from the front, and run hardware/software lifecycles like a portfolio manager.

Vendor management

  • ▸Evaluate on fit, security posture, financial health, exit path — not demos.
  • ▸Contracts: SLAs, data ownership, sub-processors, termination.
  • ▸QBRs with vendors too; hold them to roadmap promises.
  • ▸Avoid single-vendor lock-in for anything strategic.

People — the long game

  • ▸Hire for trajectory + values, train for skills.
  • ▸Career ladders make 'what's next' visible and reduce silent attrition.
  • ▸1:1s weekly, written — they are the highest-ROI (Return on Investment) meeting you run.
  • ▸Document role expectations, then review against them, not vibes.

Incident response from the seat

  • ▸Calm voice, short sentences, named owners.
  • ▸Single decision-maker (IC); everyone else informs.
  • ▸Comms cadence promised up front and kept.
  • ▸Postmortem blameless; actions tracked to done.

Lifecycle management

  • ▸Hardware refresh budget = total fleet / years of useful life.
  • ▸Software EOL (End of Life) calendar — never get surprised by an unsupported OS (Operating System).
  • ▸License true-ups annual; reclaim before you renew.
  • ▸Decommissioning is a project, not a checkbox.

Glossary

Sub-processor
Third party your vendor uses to process your data.
Blameless postmortem
Review focused on systems, not individuals.
EOL/EOS
End of Life / End of Support — vendor stops patching.

Common pitfalls

Practice drills