The word Strategy is used so often that it does not mean much to most people. In BigCos most strategy departments are focused on M&A activity, and as most deals do not materialize or impact an average employee, there is a mass apprehension about what these teams do. People who work in the Strategy development areas are constantly worried about its lost import and the decreased significance of their team’s contributions. There is a popular opinion that Strategy development is akin to putting together fancy slide presentations that gather dust on a shelf. This stigma is real. I’ve worked for a Strategy department and soon my life’s mission transformed to making Strategy actionable and tangible.
Recently, IDEOU conducted a quick poll during it’s webinar: Creating Winning Strategies on 10th, September 2019 about the audience’s opinion on creating Strategy. Below are the results. Though this is by no means an ideal sample, it is interesting how Strategy development is perceived. In this blog I discuss 5 ways to restore Strategy to the glory it deserves.
| Unactionable | 35% |
| Top down driven | 31% |
| Purely analytical and academic exercise | 15% |
| Obligatory annual process | 11% |
| Unrealistic | 9% |
1.Is your Strategy unactionable:
The best way to test this is by asking yourself “What would I do differently?”, “What would X or X’s team do differently?” If the answer is “nothing” or “I do not know” then it is time to go back to the drawing board.
2.Trapped in a top-down strategy:
My mentor once said that I should take my CEO very seriously but not literally. This is very true in this situation. Use this as an opportunity to show your chops and own the interpretation of the strategy and developing potential choices. If you are the leader at the top, employ co-design and co-develop frameworks to get more buy-in. Remember, buy-in is important in both directions.
3. Believe a purely academic analytical process for strategy creation is a waste of time:
Then don’t. Whether you are enforcing this or following this, you have a choice to not make it so. Ask your self what’s changed and why. If you believe the market, customer, competition and company – nothing has changed, then discuss what should change – new capabilities, cost structure etc.
4. Obligatory annual process is only to check of the boxes:
Strategy is not an annual thing. It is dynamic process and follows the rule garbage in, garbage out. First, separate Strategy development from Operational and Financial budgeting process. During the strategy creating discuss market movement, assumptions, challenges, and constraints. Revisit the vision and interpret it as if you were reading it for the first time. Translate the new interpretation to play and win in the current market. As you can see this conversation is entirely different from a operational or financial budgeting conversation. Tie the qualitative and quantitative outcomes to incentives.
5. Unrealistic and lofty strategies getting you down:
Instead of spending your energy in proving to everyone around that a strategy is unrealistic and cannot be achieved, discuss what must be true to make it happen. What should be true about the customers, competitors, implicit and explicit constraints and organization’s own capabilities, its people and its culture. Go down the checklist and with every new learning readjust the strategy.
At the end of the day, if your front-line employees are not effected by the strategy or unaware, then there is something amiss. Strategy should not be a secret but a sacred tenet that everyone at an organization owns in their own way.
What are your thoughts? What challenges have you faced? Please share!