Strategy Is A Verb : Reclaiming Brand Strategy as a Business Discipline of Choice, Action, and Consequence by Martin Weigel

"You have to do it on purpose. With conviction. With curiosity. With love. And you have to do it — strategy is a verb."

— Martin Weigel

The book arrives at an urgent moment. Business leaders are grappling with the very real challenges of operating in a non-linear world, where attention is fractured, optimism is thinned, growth is anaemic, and technological disruption threatens everything and has clarified nothing. They are hungry for perspective that matches the scale of that. And yet, somewhere along the line, strategy got hollowed out — turned into a process, a deliverable, a warm-up act. The art of the merely feasible, not the art of the necessary or the desired.

Against this backdrop, Strategy is a Verb argues that the most urgent task for anyone who cares about brands is not to optimise, not to fill space, but to show up with conviction — and build things that are more vivid, more worthwhile, and more valuable.

Structured around 58 verbs — from Cook and Imagine to Struggle, Disobey, Unlearn, and Embody — it's not a how-to manual. No formulas, frameworks, or hacks. No guaranteed pathways to success. No "five secrets of awesome brands I've never worked on" nonsense. Equal parts kindling and kerosene. And a clear articulation of the mental posture strategy demands — imagination over optimisation, judgement over process, conviction over compliance.

The book keeps circling the questions that have always mattered: How do you make change happen on your own terms? What separates great from merely good? And what does it take to hold meaning in a world that has made peace with noise?

There are no clean and tidy answers to any of them. But asking them — seriously, repeatedly, with some courage — is what strategy actually is.