Why I fail to blogging two years ago, and what I can do about it now.
Why I Stop Posting
The main reason I stopped posting on Strategies Blog two years ago is that the most popular post is the most fun to write.
I have to hear the words we need to create a strategic plan or at least an order of magnitude more often than I've heard "we have to make a strategy." This is because most people see the strategy as an exercise in producing a planning document. In this conception, the strategy is manifested as a long list of initiatives related to the time frame and resources assigned.
Somewhat curiously, at least for me, the initiative itself is often called a "strategy." That is, each different initiative is a strategy and plan is an organized list of strategies.
Many people with whom I work find it difficult to distinguish between the two and wonder why companies need to have both. And I think they are right to wonder. Most strategic plans that I have seen more than 5 years working in the realm of strategy is only a budget with a lot of words that clearly attached. This may occur because the finance function is very involved in the strategy process in most organizations. But also causes a profound antipathy I see, especially in the executive line, towards strategic planning. I know very few who look forward to the joy of the start of the next strategic planning cycle.
To make the strategy more interesting - and different from the budget
We need to free ourselves from this obsession with planning. Strategy is not planning - it is the manufacture of an integrated set of choices that collectively position the company in the industry so as to create a sustainable advantage relative to the competition and deliver superior financial returns. I found that after it is made clear to their line manager acknowledged that strategy did not just fancily-worded budgeting and they get more interested in it.
Obviously you can not run without the initiative strategy, investments, and budgeting. But what you need to get managers to focus on before you start on things is a strategy that will make this initiative coherent.
The strategy is a single thing, there is a strategy for a particular business - not a set of strategies. It is an integrated set of choices: whether we win aspiration, where we will play, how we're going to win, what capabilities need to be in place, and what the management system should be instituted?
Strategy that tells you what the initiative actually make sense and are likely to produce the results you really want. Strategies like that really makes planning easy. There is little fights about which initiatives should and should not make the list, because the strategy allows discernment of what is important and what is not.
Five questions can easily be answered on one page and if they take more than five pages (ie one page per question) then your strategy may unhelpfully morphing into a more classic strategic plan.
This definition of strategy can be confusing for those who have spent a lifetime produces traditional strategic plan. At the end of the day (thanks in part to a hefty amount of pre-work by the head of strategy), we have a nice set of integrated options. I congratulate the group thinking and working great and confirms what I judged to be a very good strategy.
My spirit though, the CEO was problematic. I asked why. "Is that all we have to do?" He asked, as if he thought he had cheated on the exam. I'm sure he wished that he had to fill out a binder and a long list of initiatives to feel that he has a thorough strategic planning process this year. I assured him that he had given any strategy except a bit of attention. And that the win over the planning strategy. I suspect that the CEO would never go back.
So if you passed the five pages it's time to ask: Are we answering five key questions or we do something else and call it a strategy? If the latter: eject, eject!
If you do not have a gmail account, maybe you are interested to see my previous post about How To Make The New Gmail Accounts
If you do not have a gmail account, maybe you are interested to see my previous post about How To Make The New Gmail Accounts














