Strategy Is Useless

Think you get it when your colleague says, “strategy?” Better ask what they mean.

Strategy is a useless word.

Why do I say that? Well, here's what I think is a useful word.

A useful word is when you say a word like “dog” or “table,” and I think of a thing like a dog or a table. Now, of course, we know that there are different types of dogs and different styles of tables. Nevertheless, when you use those words, I know what you mean.

I'm in business meetings all the time. Whenever I ask a client if they have a strategy for something, the people on the client team often all look at each other, and they're like, hmm, that's a good question. Do we have a strategy? Do we not have a strategy?  Why don’t they know?

We have a whole bunch of terms which are very abstract concepts and we don't really necessarily mean the same things when we use them.

It's because they don't really agree on what the word strategy means. One of the problems that we have in business today is that we have a whole bunch of terms like vision, road map, strategy, even brand, which are very abstract concepts, and we don't necessarily mean the same things when we use them.

Let me give you an example. We often run “strategy” workshops for clients, and I've learned not to assume when someone says they want us to help them develop a strategy that I know what on earth it is that they want.

It could be a key decision that they want to make. It could be identifying a set of products that they want to bring to market. It could be a geographic plan. It could be sales tactics. It could be a road map of the projects that they want to do in the coming year. It could be a vision, almost like a mission statement. It could be what customers they want to go after. It could be all of those things, but it might not be all of those things. So, we have to engage in a conversation to determine what they’re asking for.

I’ll often bring the key stakeholders together as part of the planning process for a strategy workshop, and they’ll all agree that the purpose of the workshop is to develop a strategy.

We will then ask them to do a quick exercise. We'll give them each a piece of paper and let everyone take a few minutes, individually, and write down their own table of contents of the “strategy” that they have in mind—basically a list of what that strategy should contain.

When everyone shares their list, they’re usually entirely different. Maybe there's some overlap, some commonalities, but certainly not the same vision of what that strategy should be. That gives us in those situations the opportunity to correct that, have dialogue, and come to a common understanding so that when we go to our workshop, we know what we're trying to accomplish.

There's no point in having a debate about what the word “strategy” means or what the word “vision” means or what the word “roadmap” means. These are just labels.

I would encourage you to have these kinds of conversations. There's no point in having a debate about what the word “strategy” means or what the word “vision” means or the word “roadmap” means. That's just a waste of time. These are only labels.

The real question isn't what a word means. The real question is: “What do you need?”

Now, my definition of strategy—which I'll offer to you, but you're welcome to come up with your own—is simple:

A strategy is answers to a set of questions.

That's it. That's my definition of a strategy. It’s what I always say to clients that may want to have us do a project or workshop.

So, if strategy is an answer to a series of questions, what are the questions?

It’s kind of the same as asking what the table of contents is. What is it you want to have decided and determined that you will then label the strategy? Think about that as you're working on strategies, whether it's to respond to Coronavirus or anything else. Get specific about what it is you need to figure out and what answers you need to drive your business and get past words that don't have a common meaning.

What's your definition of strategy? Let me know in the comments.

My new book coming out in October, Winning Digital Customers, goes into some depth on developing digital strategies. You can get the first chapter of that book for FREE right now, if you like, by clicking this link https://WDC.HT/Chapter.

#business #businessplanning #strategicplanning #strategy