Is Your Strategy Ready to Drive Your Change?

Change is always a choice. Having said that, it’s worth noting the words of former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki:

“If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.”

For many of us, the success of change initiatives hinges on a critical foundational factor: strategy. Specifically, is your strategy fit to drive the intended change, or will it create more problems than it solves?

Tony Manning, in his book Making Sense of Strategy, offers a compelling perspective: “Strategy is change management.” Strategy and change are inextricably linked. The key question, then, is: how do you assess whether your strategy is ready to drive your change?

What Makes Your Strategy Good for Driving Change?

A strategy that effectively supports change will have three essential characteristics:

1. Clear, Hard-to-Reverse Choices

• It defines your organisation’s purpose (the “why”), the specific issues or challenges it seeks to address (the “what”), and the strengths and means upon which it will draw to achieve them (the “how”).
• It involves trade-offs. By committing to one path, as leaders you inherently chose not to pursue others, focusing resources on what matters most.

2. Focused Prioritisation

• It’s not a laundry list of aspirations or targets. Instead, it embodies actions that will make the most impact, given your organisation’s strengths, capabilities, and constraints.

3. Alignment with Capabilities

• A good strategy aligns with your organisation’s readiness for change, taking into account existing resources, current or emergent strengths, and the capacity to execute.

What Does a Poor Strategy Look Like?

Bad strategy often appears appealing on the surface but contains at least a couple of the following weaknesses:

• Ambitions Disguised as Strategy: Statements like “We want to grow market share by 20%” or “Maximise operational excellence” are not strategies. These are goals or aspirations and lack the specificity needed to drive real change.
• Vague Buzzwords: Terms like “leverage synergies” or “embrace innovation” sound impressive but offer no actionable guidance.
• Overloaded Priorities: When everything is a priority, nothing is. A long list of initiatives reflects a lack of focus and a reluctance to make tough choices.

When Strategy Isn’t Right, Change Outputs Suffer

If your strategy falls short, the consequences ripple through your change initiatives:

1. Misaligned Change

Without clear strategic direction, change efforts fragment and lose coherence. Bottom line: wasted time and resources.

2. Employee Confusion and Resistance

If people can’t connect the change to a clear strategy, they’ll struggle to understand their roles in context and may resist the change. Engagement and morale typically suffer.

3. Failure to Achieve Outcomes

A poor strategy leads to superficial changes that fail to address real challenges. The result? Missed opportunities and unmet objectives.

Is Your Strategy Ready to Drive Change?

To avoid these pitfalls, leaders must evaluate their strategy against five key questions:

1. Does the strategy define a clear purpose and direction?
2. Does the strategy align with the organisation’s capabilities and resources?
3. Can the strategy be communicated effectively?
4. Does the strategy genuinely prioritise what matters most?
5. Does the strategy anticipate obstacles and provide a path to overcome them?

Closing Thoughts: The Role of Leadership

Ultimately, the success of any change initiative often depends upon the strength of the strategy driving it. A fit-for-purpose strategy defines where your organisation wants to go and charts a realistic path for getting there, grounded in its unique context and capability.

For business leaders, the takeaway question is clear: is your strategy truly ready to drive your change?

If not, it may be time to rethink and reframe.

Clive Gower-Collins is a New Zealand-based consultant specializing in strategic execution and value realization. With experience spanning public-private partnerships and project delivery across Australasia and the Pacific, he also explores AI augmentation and system/people integrations.