How to Make Your Strategy Engaging and Inspiring

Most strategies are not formulated effectively. They fail to engage and inspire. The result is a lack of execution and failure. The good news? If you follow the rules, formulating a strategy in an engaging and inspiring way is easy.

Problems in Strategy Formulation

Clearly formulating your strategy is tremendously important. After all, if you can’t communicate it effectively, your strategy basically doesn’t exist.

But you’ve probably seen them: impressive strategic plans with many pages, numbers and charts. And if you have come to the point to actually have read them, they leave you with a feeling of now what, what should we do?

You are not alone. Because strategy formulation is full of problems. Here’s seven:

? Dress to Impress: Great looks to compensate for good content

? Fluff: Lots of blah blah and unnecessary words to fill pages

? Empty Rhetoric: Big words without any concrete meaning

? Slogans: Nice sounding phrases with no substance

? Goals: Just stating goals, without explaining how to get there

? Dogma: Seeing the mission-vision-strategy template as mandatory

? Quantity over Quality: Length as main indicator of quality

According to strategy professor Richard Rumelt, in his book, Good Strategy / Bad Strategy, the situation is so bad that he argues that simply having A STRATEGY is already a competitive advantage.

What he means is that, because most organizations don’t, having formulated a clear strategy in itself already puts you ahead of the pack.

This is good news, because it means that you can make a radical improvement by just changing the way you formulate your strategy.

What Is a Good Strategy?

As explained in an earlier Newsletter [Edition 10], good strategy is strategy that Inspires, Touches, and Moves. This means:

Strategy that Inspires

Strategy that ignites interest. It excites, it triggers people’s curiosity, imagination and creativity. It makes their brains work and replaces their current views about an organization’s future with a better one.

Strategy that Touches

Strategy that triggers positive emotions. It feels right, aligns with people’s values and passions, and makes people wholeheartedly say yes. It is purpose-driven and based on sympathy and empathy with others and the world at large.

Strategy that Moves

Strategy that enables and stimulates action. It is clear, actionable, and contextualized so that everyone in an organization understands what it takes from them to execute it.

So, effectively formulating your strategy means that you formulate it in a way so that your strategy inspires, touches, and moves.

The 5P Model of Strategy Formulation

How do you effectively formulate your strategy in a simple way? There’s various ways to do so, but I prefer the 5P approach to Strategy Formulation that I have developed over time.

Having worked with different formats and models, I’ve found that the following approach works well. I’ve called it the 5P Model of Strategy Formulation.

?? Purpose: Why

The reason you’re doing what you do. Call it mission, values, impact or anything else, your Purpose describes how you want to make a difference and thus WHY your organization should exist.

?? Perspective: How

The future image of your organization, envisioning as clearly as possible what it should look like a few years from now. It makes it clear HOW your Purpose could be realized.

?? Priorities: What

The focus you will have in terms of attention, effort and budget. To realize your Perspective, there’s always too much to do. Therefore you need to prioritize so that it is clear WHAT you are going to do.

?? Plan: When

The plans you make to achieve your priorities. This adds a time dimension to your objectives so that it is clear WHEN you are going to do what and in which order.

?? People: Who

The people who will do all of this. Nothing happens without people. Therefore, it is essential to identify WHO is going to do what—while keeping into account they have other things to do as well.

Is the 5P Model entirely original? Of course not. It looks, for example, like the Pyramid of Purpose. But it is different as well (such as a different order of the Why, How, What questions). What matters most, though, is that it makes sense.

We can see that by looking at the relationships between the 5Ps. There’s a cycle that goes two ways.

Clockwise:

Purpose gives meaning to the Perspective

Perspective creates coherence for the Priorities

Priorities define what the Plan should cover

Plan shows what People should do

People define the Purpose

Counter-clockwise:

People execute the Plan

Plan makes the Priorities actionable

Priorities make the Perspective tangible

Perspective outlines how the Purpose can be achieved

Purpose drives the People

You see? It is coherent and complete in both directions.

Note: If you want to further upgrade your strategy and implementation skills, should have a look at our Certified Strategy & Implementation Consultant (CSIC) program. Registrations for our February 2025 cohort close on January 31, so this week is your last chance to join. Check our website for all information and registration: www.strategy.inc/certification.

Further Reading: