When NOT to Have a Strategy

As a strategist, one of the pieces of advice I give most often is: stop doing strategy.

Let me be clear: this is not the preamble to a bullsh*tty sales pitch. I’m not trying to tell you that you can’t do strategy on your own—that you just NEED my services, because I do strategy in a way that they can’t.?

I mean it genuinely. A lot of people can just not have a strategy, and be totally fine. ??

When Don’t You Need a Strategy?

Why are some folks fine to stay on course without a clear strategy? Because they aren’t actually intending to change anything substantial.?

If we’re content to keep on doing what we’re doing, what we really need to be focused on is planning and budgeting. These processes are indispensable for staying the course.?

But strategy is about the unknown. If we only intend to keep doing things that we already understand very well, there’s no need for it.

Strategy is a tool. And like all tools, it should be calibrated to suit the problem that it’s looking to solve. There are many situations when people reach into the strategy toolbox in response to a problem for which it’s actually poorly suited.

The WRONG Reasons For Strategy

Below are some of the “catalysts” for strategy I’ve heard most often before I end up suggesting that people just go without a strategy.?

A key note here: sometimes (often, in fact) these starting points are just a thread to pull at, and once the conversation gets underway it becomes clear that there is something else that people want to change. For that something else, strategy often is the right tool. What I’m suggesting here is that if pulling on the thread doesn’t take us any deeper than these “initial situations,” people should seriously consider just moving forward without a strategy.

1. “The last 3-year strategy just expired.”

This one is super common and among my favourite situations to consider going strategy-free. Many people consider strategy purely through a cyclical lens, something that needs refreshing when (and only when) the last one has elapsed.?

Here’s my problem: The “strategies” that often come out of such processes are less fully-fledged strategies than just laundry lists of initiatives. They end up functioning as a kind of spring cleaning, where the primary focus is on minor tweaks to the status quo rather than making any real change.

I’m all for cleanliness (it’s next to godliness, after all). Regular upkeep is incredibly valuable—like addressing the leaks in your roof before they lead to rot. But strategy isn’t the best tool for identifying what kinds of maintenance needs to be done.

2. “Our vision/mission/values /[insert other part of the ‘strategy lexicon’] feels stale”

I’ve seen this one arise in two different circumstances:?

1?? The first is connected to the above. It happens when people just feel like it’s been a long time since they’ve revisited their strategy, and in these cases, it’s usually fine to skip the refresh.??

2?? The second is connected to some kind of behaviour that they’re hoping to see, but which isn’t happening. For example, a company might feel that their employees aren’t as engaged as they had been previously, or aren’t taking ownership over certain elements of the business in the way that executives were hoping. Sometimes, a company’s value prop involves their corporate ideals, and when they see stagnation in client interest, they think that their “identity” needs a refresh.

In such cases, the real problem we should be focusing on in building strategy is the problem that we’re looking to fix and how we think we’re going to make that happen. It’s a hypothesis that the company values are driving the outcome, but there are lots of other potential causes, and a wide range of candidate solutions.?

This is a situation where strategy is totally worthwhile. However, leaders who’ve already made up their mind that refreshing vision, mission and values (VMV) is the solution should be aware ?? : these cosmetic changes rarely have the magnitude of impact they’re hoping to see in terms of change in employee or client behaviour! Refreshing your vision/mission/values might help us get there, and if so that’s great; but all too often leaders anticipate writing up a snappy VMV and calling it a day. And that changes nothing on its own.

3. “We want to hit $10M in revenues next year”

… or “We want to serve 1 million meals to the needy,” or “We want to be the #1 company in our industry/category/geography. ” I mentioned above that strategy is about the unknown, and this idea of “a KPI = a strategy” helps us to dive a bit deeper into that.?

Strategy is useful in a situation that contains a lot of uncertainty. But the strategy itself is supposed to make clear what we believe will work ??and how to put that into action ??. A KPI does neither of these things: it says absolutely nothing about how we think we can achieve the stated goal, nor about what we need to do to put the strategy into practice.?

When I pull at the thread of these kinds of goal statements, clients are either:

1?? on track to meet that objective (or something close), in which case they’re actually just seeking maintenance and consistency—both of which are better suited to the techniques of management than those of strategy. Or,?

2?? they’re not on track to meet those objectives, in which case it’s helpful to dig into how they came to choose that objective & the timeline on which to meet it, what bad outcomes would come about if that timeline weren’t met, etc. These lines of questioning usually reveal a deeper driver, and once again, that’s the real problem that we should be dealing with directly, not the KPI that it spawned.

4. “Innovation!”

(Or “synergy,” or “AI” or “sustainability”, or or or…)?

Most of the time when I speak with clients asking for this sort of thing, what’s driving their interest is a concern about falling behind. “I hear so much talk about [insert latest buzzword] and I see my competitors investing in it, so I don’t want to miss the boat!” This has an air of nobody-ever-got-fired-for-buying-IBM, because somebody who breaks with the trend will get criticized for it if the trend turns out to be a hit, whereas they’ll never get any flack for investing in something that was hot when everyone else was doing the same.?

How do we tell a fad from a genuine shift? If I could tell you that, I’d be living comfortably off untold riches from penny stocks and the Powerball. But what I can tell you is the difference between leaders I’ve seen who manage to derive value from these fads and leaders who end up spending money and getting very little return for their investments.?

Successful leaders are the ones who have

1?? a clear understanding of what creates value for their clientele,?

2?? a clear understanding of how their organization operates to deliver that value, and?

3?? an openness to consider how new developments can change the fundamentals of their value equation.?

In short: it’s not really about the fancy new tech or the latest buzzword. Leaders lacking any of these qualities ?? will struggle to get value from the latest fads, even if they end up sticking. What’s key is that they understand how their organization creates value, and that they’re willing to revise their thinking as necessary. For those leaders, “innovation” isn’t going to be the catalyst that spurs new strategy work. Instead, it will be the realization that there is a shift in progress that gets to the heart of their unique business model, and that they need to respond to it.?

Welcome to the Dark Side

So far, we’ve established that strategy is about readiness for change. We can't actually make meaningful change until we're confronted with the inadequacy of the status quo.?

Put a tad more bluntly: Strategy is about discomfort. You've gotta see Uncle Owen's burning skeleton before you decide to become a Jedi.?

Before you start the strategy conversation, you need to have the problem conversation. What’s not working right now? Why isn’t it working? If we stay on the current trajectory, where will we be in 3 years? What (if anything) is unacceptable about that??

Don’t fall for the siren song of “performative” strategy, the great art of corporate theatre. It’s easy to clutch at the illusory promises of “innovation” or a shiny new VMV. It’s hard to look a problem directly in the face. But we need to do it, precisely because it’s hard, and precisely because that’s how we grow.??