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Hannibal’s Cigar: Love it When a Strategy Comes Together

Hannibal’s Cigar: Love it When a Strategy Comes Together

The A-Team's Faceman built trust and gathered intel through observation. Hannibal's strategy sets the direction.

Vaugan Nayagar
September 15, 2025

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Hey my friend ☕️,

Still on the first 100 days…
Today we’re talking strategy.
You can smell strategy before you see it.
It’s the wispy smoke curling off Hannibal’s cigar.

Strategy builds on Faceman’s earlier work in the first 30 days:
Gathering intel through observing and questions.
Smiling, schmoozing, caffeine-ing.

What insight did I gather as input to my strategy?

How the organization works (culture).
What problems are holding things back.
How I can have impact.

In Part 1 of the First 100 Days series, Faceman’s job was to observe and gather intel. If you missed it, click the banner and check out tips for the information-gathering phase of your first 100 days.

Now, it’s Hannibal’s turn to strategise in order to have impact.

How to turn Faceman’s intel into a plan?

Grab your coffee ☕️

Let’s chat!

Hannibal the Strategist: I Love It When a Plan Comes Together

In your first 100 days, you need to have impact and deliver some strong results.
The best way to have this impact, is thru a good strategy.
That’s why I turned to Hannibal.

In the 80’s A-Team series, John “Hannibal” Smith is the mastermind.
Calm under fire, sharp in diagnosis, and always ready with a plan.
He had a knack for turning intel into strategy.
Making sense of chaos.
Bringing clarity.

And just like that, the day is saved.

This makes him the perfect figure to embody the Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy/Bad Strategy disciplines of diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent action.

"If you have a problem… if no one else can help… and if you can find them… maybe you can hire the A-Team."

Good Strategy vs Bad Strategy

According to Richard Rumelt, good strategy identifies the critical challenge, sets a guiding policy, and aligns coherent actions.

A good strategy can turn limited resources into outsized results.

Bad strategy is vague, full of fluff and wishful goals, and avoids confronting the real problems. A bad strategy can fail to have real impact.

Step 1: Diagnose Before You Prescribe

The heart of a good strategy is diagnosis. Miss that, and the rest is theatre.

Two things stood out for me:

Friction. Plenty of good intentions, but sometimes not the same direction. Some grease could be applied.
Culture shock. I came from a world of PMOs and neat agile frameworks like SAFe. Here, it’s responsiveness over ceremony. Fast. Fluid. Slightly uncomfortable. For me, anyway.

Diagnosis told me the plan needed to be about alignment without killing the agility that makes this place tick. Challenge accepted.

Step 2: Match the Play to the Field

There’s no universal “right” strategy. The field dictates the play.

In crisis? Stabilise.
In growth? Experiment.
In transition? Align.

It’s the same logic as situational leadership. Different style for different context.

Our organization is in growth, but growth with complexity. If I copy-paste a rigid playbook like SAFe, I choke the speed.

If I let chaos reign, we drift. The right move is building coherence while keeping the responsiveness alive.

How the heck to do that? Look out for BA Baracus and Murdock coming soon! I’ll expand on this 100 Days A-Team Series with Execution and Adaptation.

Step 3: Coherence, Not Complexity

Coherence means aligning actions so they reinforce one another instead of pulling in different directions.

A good strategy isn’t a grab bag of initiatives. It’s a focused set of moves that fit together to tackle the core challenge.

Complexity is the enemy.

So, my strategy is a set of aligned and focused actions that fix the issues diagnosed.
All while avoiding complexity…

The Hannibal Audit

Before you roll out a plan, run this audit:

Diagnosis: Can you name the core challenge in one sentence?
Match: Does this play fit this field?
Coherence: Can you scribble the core actions on a Post-it? Are they aligned?

Fail that, and you’re not Hannibal.

You’re just Faceman using ChatGPT for strategy.

Key Takeaway

Strategy isn’t a to-do list. It’s a response to a real challenge.

Good strategy = diagnose, set direction, line up actions that work together.

Bad strategy = fluff, wishful goals, and ignoring the hard problems.

Hannibal’s rule: keep it sharp, simple, and tailored to the situation.

It’s my birthday!

Hip hip Hooray - got to spend a lovely weekend with the main actors in my movie with some serene Western Cape views.

Thanks Dhivs for all the spoils!

Hope you enjoyed today’s post my friend!

Look out for BA and Murdock soon :-)

Till next week ☕️

Vaugan

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