Georgia Messinger’s Post

I had my first “last class” at HBS today. I can’t believe the semester is already coming to a fast close. It feels like orientation was yesterday (cheesy, I know). My Strategy Professor ended our final session with a line I can’t stop thinking about and wanted to share: “A unique strategy is an act of courage.” Now back to our very first class, we learned that strategy is “an integrated set of choices.” Somewhere along the way, our case discussions turned into a mirror, as I realized that definition applies just as much to life as it does to business. We wake up every morning holding choices... where to spend our energy, who to spend time with, what to say yes or no to, what future we’re quietly shaping. But choices don’t exist in a vacuum. We also carry context: our obligations, our environments, our ambitions, our identities, our competing priorities. So the real work (in business and in life) is integration. Choosing with intention and choosing with awareness. At the end of class, we reflected on a deceptively simple question: What makes an excellent strategist? The answers created a web of tensions: • analytical yet imaginative • grounded yet ambitious • structured yet improvisational • flexible yet committed How can we be all these things? I think the answer has something to do with courage. Courage to choose. Courage to adapt. Before we left, my professor shared his wishes for us (and I tried not to tear up): To find personal happiness, however we define it. To find professional success, however we define it. And it brought me right back to that first definition: strategy as an integrated set of choices. So as this first semester speeds by faster than I ever imagined, I’m sitting with the questions I’ll carry into the next: What do I choose? And how do I define it? I have more questions than I do answers. But I’m finding the courage to define success and happiness for myself, and to stand by those definitions, even when the world hands me easier, louder ones.