Joining us this episode is Jeff Walker, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and M&A at BraunAbility — a company that builds wheelchair-accessible vehicles, founded fifty-five years ago in an Indiana garage by Ralph Braun and now owned by the Swedish patient-capital investor Investor AB through its Patricia Industries arm. Educated at Yale and Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, where he studied under the legendary endowment investor David Swensen, Jeff sees strategy through three lenses: the historian's pattern recognition, the economist's sense of cost versus value, and a parent's. In this conversation, we explore a deceptively simple question every strategy leader should be able to answer: what is the strategy office actually for, and how do you know it's adding value rather than quietly taxing the business it serves?
Things we will cover:
- Why "the center" is best understood not as a group of smarter people who second-guess the business, but as a decision boundary — the place where enterprise-wide choices naturally belong The two tests for what truly belongs at the center: scale (cross-business leverage) and duration (the length of the strategic bet) - The "two seams" framework — a stated priority with no resources behind it, and a shadow project with no bets behind it Jeff's sharpest warning: never mistake curiosity for value-creating results, and the passive-investing philosophy underneath it - Why every question you pose to the business is a tax that had better be driving alpha before you ask it - His make-versus-buy default for strategy work, and why he runs the center as a team of one The strategist as a parent — someone who sets things up, teaches, and gets out of the way, rather than the invisible hand behind the curtain
From David Swensen's table to the M&A seat, Jeff offers an unusually honest set of tools for pressure-testing your own role. Before you ask the business your next recurring question, can you name the choice it might change — and why that change is worth the organization's time? For any strategy leader, it's a bracing invitation to earn your place at the center.
Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreycwalker/ BraunAbility: https://www.braunability.com Learn more about Outthinker's community of chief strategy officers - https://outthinker.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/outthinker-networks
Thank you to our guest Jeff Walker for such a thoughtful and honest conversation.
Learn more about Outthinker's community of chief strategy officers - https://outthinker.com/
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