Keep Strategy Simple

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Every week, I carefully curate inspiring articles and share my thoughts, accompanied by motivational quotes. I hope you enjoy this next edition of my Monday Motivation, and I eagerly anticipate hearing your feedback and suggestions for future topics.

This week, I would like to share some brief thoughts on strategy, in particular on where strategy design ends and execution begins. The result is often a mix of strategic objectives, KPIs and action items.? This can result in a strategy that appears to be top-down with all the steps necessary for success, but, very often it is not and only leads to confusion, frustration and lost time.

Today’s article, Keep Strategy Simple, focuses on exactly this area. The author offers four dos and don’ts to avoid this what can be described as a “strategic plans that are no more than a mish-mash collage of ‘individual level’ rush-to-do’s, often missing out on an ‘organization-level’ cohesive and thought-through design intent.”

Don't develop strategic plans for functions.

We should not confuse a strategy with a list of action plans for each function. As with many companies, the challenge identified by the author is not a lack of a strategy, but, in fact, too many documents labeled as a strategy. For example, marketing is a process or, if you prefer, an activity carried out by individuals. (The “-ing” on the word tells you that.) So, if you couple “marketing” with “strategic plan” the result is most likely to become a list of actions carried out by individuals. The result is an operational one, not a strategic one. While that's as it should be, why label it a “strategic plan” except to make it sound more important. The practice lowers the significance of “strategy” and “strategic plan” for members of the organization where it is relevant and important.

Confine “strategy” to the business level.

Many times, companies lack a strategic perspective at the business level because executives equate “strategy” with action. Strategy involves positioning, not action. For example, a company may take a position on product quality - such as high end with a premium price, or low end at a low cost. Executing this would be a distinct step and likely involve an action plan.

Keep strategy and action separate.

Individual action focused on execution sits below business strategy and falls on the shoulders of various departments or functions (HR, finance, manufacturing/operations and marketing). To avoid strategy becoming mere action, you need to take a helicopter view of your organization and consider its relationship with its key stakeholders and competitors. A critical change in thinking can often be affected by changing the language used within the organization. Consider “customer strategy” in place of “marketing strategy” and “employee strategy” in place of “HR strategy.” This places the mind where it should be for strategy -outside with stakeholders, not inside with functions.

Mind your language.

The use of language and terms has a fundamental impact on thought and behavior. Whenever you find yourself confused about the boundaries between your strategy and the actions you're taking, it may help remember this simple aphorism: What happens on the outside is strategy, what happens on the inside is action. Then shelve terms like “IT strategic plan.” A plan is not a strategy. That's not to say that plans aren't important - IT, HR, and all teams and functions should have plans - but plans are operational constructs, however you label them. If you start calling plans strategic, you'll be tempted to short-change the effort you need to make to create a good strategy.

At the end of the day, the key thing to remember is that a strategy is about identifying where you need to go in order to satisfy your stakeholders’ needs. As such, it is essentially an outward looking, relatively high-level exercise. Only after you've figured out where you want to go should you move to the operational challenge of figuring out the specific steps you'll need to take on the inside in order to get there.

Stay on the beat with me and have an amazing start to your week ?

Yours,

Mark

Source

Kenny, G. (August 27, 2024) Keep Strategy Simple. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2024/08/keep-strategy-simple