“Strategy” is one of those words that is loosely bantered about without much precision. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what a strategy is. There is even more confusion around what a strategy does. In working with groups to develop strategy, I’ve learned a few important lessons: 1) strategies that try to answer every question are not strategies (and never get completed), and 2) strategies that answer too few question become pretty posters and Powerpoint slides but do little to drive decision-making and action. A good strategy sets the context in which an organization should operate. A strategy should:
- Set boundaries
- Create focus
- Enable prioritization
The strategy accomplishes this across five dimensions:
- Who the company serves
- What the company provides
- How (at a high level) it is provided
- Where and when it is provided
- To what end (why) the company provides it
Simply arraying the areas of context (boundaries, focus, prioritization) against these five dimensions creates a simple framework for defining a strategy. Such a strategy will drive decision-making and action without actually articulating every decision and action. That allows the organization to remain nimble and responsive to changes in the environment while moving toward a broader goal.
The key is focusing on results or outcomes, not tactics. For example, an organization might have a strategy to focus its resources on mission critical processes. The company might choose to outsource to accomplish this strategy but outsourcing is not the strategy. While subtle, the difference is important.
Good strategies create a framework for decision-making and actions. They allow autonomy and improvisation while keeping the organization moving in the right direction.
This post was very helpful to me this morning. I’ve been trying to help others in understanding that isolated interventions are not effective and don’t drive outcomes. My focus has been on asking questions related to 1.) what is the problem we are trying to solve, and 2) what interventions support getting to our outcomes. I’ve encountered some resistance. It seems like busy, busy, busy has become equated with delivering results. I call it the “praying, wishing, hoping” methodology. Anyway, it was good reading your post- it was affirming. Thanks!
Thanks for your comment. It’s interesting that you are getting resistence although I understand it. I face that quite often. What people don’t realize is that the perceived time they are “losing” by thinknig through this is nothing compared to the time they actually lose due to lack of clarity, people moving in different directions, etc.
I like your “praying, wishing, hoping” methodlogy! I used to call that PBD (Proctology-based decision making). It’s when you pluck decisions out of your . . . well, you know where 🙂
PBD is a great acronym! I’ll have to stash that for my management class.
Great post separating the process from the strategy. Many times we end up in strategic planning meetings where the focus is not necessarily on the goal, but on what items will be needed, and what account they should come out of.
At some point, however, the implementation of the strategy becomes the issue – across your 5 dimensions, which ones do you find that most organizations need to focus on?
Hey Chris,
Thanks for your post. You’re right, implementation is the key. I’ve really come to think that this idea of strategy as boundaries is important. Instead of spending a ton of time on a detailed strategy, you create clear, focused boundaries and then start moving forward.
For implementation, if I had to pick one area that trips people up, I’d say it’s the “to what end” (outcome) question. I think that often people either don’t know the result or define a result which really isn’t that important (a process outcome versus a business outcome). Because of that, they make bad or inconsistent decisions during implementation.
But, in general, I think that the issues is less with any one item. Rather, the problem is for people to act consistently across all five of them. Often each question is answered in isolation from the others. For example, a customer sarts to complain so people take action. However, they do that without looking back to see if the customer’s complaint comes in an area that is of specific importance to the company, whether it’s a customer of high priority to the company, or whether the complaint is really preventing them from reaching their outcomes.
So the five questions should create a broad boundary (imagine a large circular fence) in which people can act. When this is done wrong, you wind up with five seprate circles with some overlap. The problem is when people play outside of the intersections.