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Strategy is not about what, but about how
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Hi <<First Name>>,
Firstly, a very warm welcome to everyone who's subscribed to my newsletter this month. It's great to have you on board. And I very much welcome your comments, observations and feedback; just hit reply to this email to get in touch.

I've been spending a lot of time these last few weeks thinking and talking about strategy. There's some good strategy out there, but there's also some fairly poor strategy. And, to be honest, some stuff that claims to be strategy, but in fact is nothing of the sort.

So here are the things I look for in a good strategy.

1. Strategy for what?

A strategy is a way to achieve a particular goal. And so every strategy needs to be focused on the achievement of one or more objectives or the overcoming of a particular challenge. This might be to grow revenue, to enhance customer satisfaction, to reduce homelessness, or whatever.

But you can't have a strategy without a goal.

Please note, though, that the goal itself is not the strategy. Any strategy document that sets out lofty aspirations or describes a desired future state, but doesn't say how we're going to get there, has missed the point. I mean, it's a good start, but it's not a strategy.

2. Strategy is about how

Strategy is about how we're going to achieve a specific goal or overcome a specific challenge. In fact, I've taken to calling strategy 'the big how'. And if I ever get around to writing a book about strategy, that's probably what I'll call it. Even if it does sound a bit stupid.

Sometimes, this 'how' can be expressed as a single concept. We might say, for example, that we're going to increase sales of new cars by offering the best after-sales service on the planet. Other times, though, we might decide to adopt a multi-pronged approach, such as increasing new car sales by enhancing reliabilty and improving after-sales service.

This latter approach is always less pleasing to a strategy purist. But complex problems sometimes require complex solutions, so we try to not get too upset when it happens. Except when we get into the terrority covered by point 4 below, at which point we absolutely lose it.

Anyway, once we have this idea of the 'big how', we can then break that down into specific things that we're going to do to make it happen. This is the bridge between strategy and tactics. It's how we actually make things happen on the ground. And you'd be surprised (or quite possibly horrified) how frequently this bit gets forgotten.

3. It needs to be the right strategy

There's little point having a strategy if it's not going to work.

The two main problems I come across here are:
  • We haven't defined our objective clearly, so we have a strategy that is, essentially, pointing in the wrong direction.
  • We have a clear objective, but our strategy isn't going to help us to achieve it because we're doing the wrong things.
Developing an effective strategy takes time, effort and resources. It requires deep insight into what the organisation wants to achieve and how it can best achieve it. This means doing lots of research, collecting lots of data and speaking with lots of people.

A good strategy is based on detailed analysis and insight, so that we know we're doing the right things to achieve our goal.

4. Strategy is as much about what you don't do as about what you do do

There's a tendency in strategy development to try to do everything. Or to write a list of what we're already doing and call it a strategy. The former indicates lack of confidence in the strategy selected. The latter indicates lack of courage to do things differently.

Strategy is about making choices. We're formulating a strategy precisely so that we can target our resources and attention on the things that will make the biggest difference, rather than just throwing everything and seeing what sticks.

And so developing a strategy is also about what we are not going to do. Or what we are going to stop doing. (Stopping doing stuff is always really hard for organisations.) If you have a new strategy but you're still doing the same things as before, something has probably gone awry.

Until next time,
Simon Perks
Director, Sockmonkey Consulting
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