What Strategy Is... and IS NOT

Many Companies Have Lost Their Way on Strategy - 

Most companies "do strategy" too often.

Somewhere in the last decade strategy in Materials seems to have turned into an annual exercise. Often these exercises are thinly disguised...

• 🤼‍♀️ ...preludes to next year's budgeting or goal-setting process.
• 💹 ...exercises to force fit financial commitments to investors.
• 🫴🏼 ...ways to surface capital, and resource asks.
• (💬 leave a comment telling me your experience with strategy exercises..)

We’ve confused strategy with planning.

These things are important, but they are anything but Strategy.

• 🚧 In fact, they get in the way of good strategy.
• 👺 Don't let your strategy process be a masquerade.

Strategy is about articulating:

1. choices, (this and not that)
2. the conditions that make those choices sound (this because of these factors)
3. and the changes which could put those choices at risk (which changing factors could invalidate our choices, and what is our plan if they do)

Here are 2 great articles from HBR on Strategy

• Keep Strategy Simple

I call this, “Keep Strategy, Strategy” as it provides several indicators to tell if your strategy is being confused with Planning.

• What is Strategy?

Michael Porter’s capstone article highlighting things that often get confused with Strategy.

The Power of Backcasting for Planning

Another effect of confusing Strategy with Planning:

Most company “Strategic Plans” are optimistic.

I’ll prove it.

Check back with a company in Q2 of the following year and find out where the “strategic action items” are at.

Most are likely still waiting to be acted on.

I’m guilty of this very thing, and we’ve seen it happen countless times.

Those are so-called “strategies” that will never meet expectations.

Most are based on the general direction, rather than concrete plans made with urgency..

That’s why we favor back-casting for actioning a Strategy.

Backcasting: work backward from the intended outcome and ask the question,

“What has to happen each quarter in order to reach the objective?”

It’s the difference between:

• “I should go see my parents more.” and
• “I only have 6 more times to see my parents.”

All of a sudden, the urgency becomes apparent.

Do you backcast when you action your Strategies? We can help.

Until next week,

Kendall -

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