In our first lecture in Strategy this week we didn’t kick things off with the Five C’s, the Four P’s, or Porter’s Five Forces, instead we shone the spotlight on ubiquitous pop-star turned movie star turned social do-gooder Madonna.

We discussed how “Madge” built and sustained commercial success over the last three decades thanks to using controversy to establish herself, surrounding herself with the right people to make up for her weaknesses as a performing artist, and reinventing herself to anticipate the needs of her fans. Most importantly, though, Madonna always had a clear vision of who she wants to be: an “icon, artist, provacateur, diva, and mogul”, as her website proclaims.

Now, that might not be everyone’s aim in life but, regardless of your ambitions, I think we can learn a few things from Madonna.

1) You don’t need to be the most talented person to accomplish your goals

2) Having a vision for yourself can go a long way

• Ever since she was young, Madonna knew that she wanted the “whole world to know who (she) was”. Whether you find this noble or not, Madonna’s creation of and commitment to her vision has made her a household name around the world. In 1977, Madonna moved to New York with $35 in her pocket and worked at Dunkin Donuts to pay her bills while she was moonlighting as a backup singer/dancer. It wasn’t until five years later that she received a recording contract that led to her debut album, Madonna, which ended up selling 10m copies and catapulted her to superstardom. Having a clear vision (for your career or life in general) not only helps us make decisions on how to use our time, money and energy, but it also gives us the resilience to persist through tough times. No matter how certain you are of what you want to do in life, we can all benefit from being a bit more deliberate and creating a strategy that will guide what we do each day of our life. Check out HBR Article “How Will You Measure Your Life?”.

3) It’s easy to be successful in one thing, but harder to do well in everything without compromise

• In 1987, a year after releasing her third album True Blue which was critically acclaimed and spawned three hit singles,  Madonna filed for divorce with her then husband, Sean Penn. Of her marriage to Penn, Madonna later said, “”I was completely obsessed with my career and not ready to be generous in any shape or form.” Madonna’s focus on a single goal has led to undisputed commercial success, but this is matched by failures in her personal life (most notably her two failed marriages and brief relationship with Vanilla Ice). In truth, this is the outcome of many people who are wildly successful in their professional lives and drills home the point that there’s an opportunity cost to everything. We just need to be straight with ourselves about what we want and what we don’t want, and appreciate that professional achievement should not be confused with personal fulfilment. For more on this check Out Tony Robbins’ TED talk on Why We Do What We Do.

To be clear (and so I don’t get in trouble with any of the profs), we didn’t spend the entire two hours of our strategy class talking about Madonna and how we all should be more like her. We did talk about business strategy frameworks and how that applied to Nestle’s introduction of its Nespresso line. But, I wanted to point out how so much of my learning and insight comes in ways that I least expected it and from people who might not even know it.

Thanks, Madonna!