Strategy in the 21st Century
Strategy is a word that is overused these days to mean any range of different things. Often I’ve seen organisations create elaborate plans and name them the strategy. One year in, these 3-5 year “strategies” become irrelevant. When done poorly, these “strategies” are actually plans that contain a laundry list of activities all leading up to some high-level goal or outcome and a bunch of metrics that seem like metrics because they have a bunch of numbers in them, and it seems like they’re super measurable.
What’s the problem with this approach to strategy?
The activities are a laundry list, it’s too many things and it’s unclear what the priority is amongst the list
The outcome is too high-level, it’s not specific enough to guide prioritisation or decision-making
The metrics look cool and quantifiable but don’t actually seem to affect our decision-making
Planning too far in advance doesn’t take into account how rapidly things are changing. Often organisations fall into the trap of continuing to live out their plans even when the plans have stopped helping them achieve the outcome or even if the outcome itself is no longer desired
Another risk organisations fall into is spending so much time creating the strategy that the world has already changed, rendering it irrelevant. I’ve seen teams spend 1.5 years creating a 3 year strategy
Finally, and perhaps most tragically, many many strategies come to be nothing more than PowerPoint presentations that die a slow, quiet death because they don’t actually do the work of mobilising people, setting an inspiring direction and guiding decision-making
As Churchill famously said, “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.” It’s the actual act of coming together to clarify the purpose, priority and approach that makes the biggest difference. The purpose, priority and approach are the key outputs, far more than any elaborate plan.
The crucial and foundational role of a strategy is to clarify where you are, where you want to be and a prioritised number of strategic bets that help you get from current to future state.
For example, given the Great Resignation, many are attempting to retain and attract great talent. One way to strategise is to say we want to go from having an okay employer brand to a great employer brand, and create a laundry list of things to help improve your brand in the market.
Another way starts with a high level long-term outcome: we want to attract and retain great talent. Then breaks that down to short-term outcomes: we shift turnover from 18% to 10% over the next 18 months. Then considers the strategic bets that will help you get there- we’re hearing from our exit interviews that a lack of career development opportunities is the primary reason for turnover, so we decide to put focus and resource behind that. In addition to this, you may choose a few more key interventions targeted towards attraction and retention. You then design metrics that help you gauge how your interventions are going so you can continually monitor and evolve things.
This is an example relevant to a singular challenge, but regardless of the scale of challenge, the principles remain the same:
Start with a clear objective
Break that down into short term and medium term outcomes
Design strategic bets that help you achieve those outcomes
Design metrics that help you track on a month to month basis how you’re traveling and what needs to change
As things evolve, continue to evolve your strategic bets
Mobilise your organisation around these strategic bets. Long and wordy PowerPoint documents aren’t powerful, leaders speaking to purpose and priorities and inspiring people to participate are
The fact that we’re living in a VUCA world has to fundamentally shift how we plan and prioritise. For most things, we can no longer predict the world enough to plan too far into the future. 30 years ago social media didn’t even exist, and now it’s a defining feature of our lives. Who knows what the next 30 years will bring? Rather than wasting our time trying to predict and plan for that, we’re better off starting with our purpose and taking an adaptive approach to meeting that future as it unfolds.
