Ask the management group of an organisation if they’ve a transparent technique, and virtually all fingers shoot up. Definitely initially. Ask those self same leaders to explain that technique in just some sentences – and also you’ll the fingers maybe waver, or just begin to decrease.
What most organisations name ‘technique’ is commonly only a plan. A long run plan. Probably fairly an elaborate plan! Helpful, maybe. Comforting, actually. However technique? Not fairly.
The distinction issues – not only for consultants, advisors and the PowerPoint brigade, however for each CEO who needs their enterprise to develop, adapt, and succeed sustainably. As a result of complicated planning with technique doesn’t simply gradual progress; it dangers taking what you are promoting confidently within the mistaken route, or on a gradual bleed to irrelevance.
The Consolation of a Plan
Let’s be trustworthy: planning feels good. It provides us management, construction, and the satisfying phantasm that the world will cooperate with our spreadsheets and to-do lists. Good planning reduces nervousness. It turns targets into neat milestones, makes groups really feel busy and productive, and reassures buyers that issues are below management.
The issue?
The world not often behaves in line with plan. Markets shift, rivals transfer sooner than anticipated, suppliers make a shock announcement. The assumptions that underpin our rigorously crafted slide decks start to crumble. Or extra precisely, floor and crystalise proper in entrance of our eyes. That’s when leaders realise that being organised isn’t the identical as being strategic.
The Uneasy Nature of Technique
Technique, against this, is uncomfortable. It asks exhausting questions, forces robust decisions – usually with restricted data, and thrives in uncertainty. It doesn’t present quick reassurance; it offers route and positioning. Good technique connects intentions to outcomes. It solutions why we’re doing one thing, the place we’ll focus our vitality, and the way we’ll win – not what we’ll do on Monday morning.
A helpful distinction:
Planning asks, What subsequent?
Technique asks, What if?
Plans search management. Technique seeks benefit. One is linear and logical; the opposite is adaptive, inventive, and infrequently slightly messy. Plans ship effectivity. Technique delivers differentiation.
Michael Porter famously outlined technique as “making decisions, trade-offs; intentionally selecting a special set of actions to ship a singular mixture of worth.” That act of alternative – and saying no as a lot as sure – is what distinguishes a strategist from a planner.
It’s why I like facilitating (robust) strategic conversations. And protecting the questions easy. What are we NOT doing – or not doing but – stays one of many hardest questions for a management group to reply as one.
When Founders Get It Proper (and Improper)
Contemplate Airbnb’s early days. In 2008, the founders have been broke. To maintain the enterprise alive, they bought novelty cereal containers (‘Obama O’s’ and ‘Cap’n McCain’s’) throughout the U.S. election. A tactical transfer? Definitely. But it surely was a part of a broader strategic intent: to check whether or not folks would purchase into an concept – any concept – constructed round shared experiences and private connection. Their near-term hustle purchased them time to execute their long-term technique. Once they later joined Y Combinator, Paul Graham famously remarked, “In the event you can persuade folks to pay $40 for $4 containers of cereal, possibly you’ll be able to persuade strangers to dwell collectively.” The remaining is historical past.
Distinction that with the numerous organisations whose ‘methods’ are merely rebranded operational plans: an inventory of initiatives, KPIs, and value targets. These groups work exhausting, however usually in service of yesterday’s logic. Targets taken from final 12 months – and extrapolated forwards. Sound acquainted? They’re busy, however not transferring ahead.
Why We Confuse Planning with Technique
A part of the confusion lies in human nature. The human mind likes – and seeks – certainty. For a lot of, it finds consolation in our lists, milestones, and conferences. Planning rewards the identical neural pathways as ticking off a to-do checklist – a small dopamine hit each time one thing will get finished. (Which is why many individuals admit to writing issues on their to do checklist which might be already completed!).
Technique calls for the other. It requires holding paradoxes, exploring ambiguity, and tolerating nervousness, all of which our brains instinctively resist.
That’s additionally why, in undertaking briefs and workshops, I usually see management groups rush to ‘the plan’ – “what are we really going to DO!” – earlier than they’ve even mentioned the strategic problem that they’re collectively fixing.
As I usually remind shoppers: a fantastically executed plan constructed on a poor technique merely will get you to the mistaken place sooner.
A Easy Check
Right here’s a fast check I take advantage of with boards and management groups.
Ask somebody to explain your technique. If their rationalization instantly triggers the query “How?”, you don’t have a technique — you may have a plan.
Good technique identifies the crucial problem standing between you and your ambition, units out a guiding coverage for overcoming it, and defines a coherent set of actions to make it occur. That’s not a to-do checklist — that’s a system of that means.
The Selection Cascade
Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley, in Taking part in to Win, proposed a easy however highly effective cascade of strategic questions:
What’s our successful aspiration?
The place will we play?
How will we win?
You may merely pause right here and mirror on how simply you’ll be able to reply these questions on your personal organisation? And in the event you requested all of your colleagues to put in writing down their solutions blind of one another, how assured are you that they would offer the identical solutions?
Now proceed:
What capabilities should now we have?
What administration methods will help them?
Most “strategic plans” bounce straight to questions 4 and 5. True technique begins at one. As Martin additionally argues, crucial query in technique is just not “what’s true?” – which he describes as ‘adversarial place taking’ however “What must be true?” That delicate shift — from arguing opinions to exploring potentialities — surfaces our assumptions, and turns battle into creativity and collaboration.
Technique as a Human Follow
In Be Extra Strategic, I describe technique not as a doc, however as a self-discipline – a mindset, a means of seeing and deciding. Technique is human. It lives in conversations, selections, and decisions usually below strain, with restricted data.
Which suggests the standard of your technique is inseparable from the standard of your pondering and the self-awareness of the folks making the calls.
I do know from first-hand expertise, having labored with hundreds of individuals everywhere in the world, that nice strategists, whether or not in enterprise, sport, or the army, share just a few habits in widespread:
- They make house to suppose.
- They pay attention deeply, not simply to phrases, however to silence, intent, and contradiction.
- They’re snug with uncertainty. They even search it.
- They’re decisive, however not reckless.
- They stability logic and instinct.
- They study quick, and act sooner.
In my work with senior leaders, I’ve discovered that those that pause to mirror, even briefly, make higher strategic selections than those that rush to motion. Being strategic isn’t about being gradual; it’s about being deliberate, being intentional, being thought-about.
Breaking freed from busyness
Many CEOs describe themselves as “too busy.” However busy in service of what? If you end up firefighting each week, there’s an excellent likelihood you’re planning exhausting however strategising little. A superb technique ought to liberate you from fixed response. It ought to simplify, make clear, and align. It ought to give folks permission to cease doing issues that don’t matter and confidence to double down on people who do.
After I work with govt groups, I usually discover that merely distinguishing technique from planning unlocks a wave of creativity and reduction. The perfect concepts come not from including extra to the checklist, however from deciding what to not do.
Technique Is a Superpower — and It’s Learnable
Being strategic is just not a talent reserved for the elite, for the most effective consultants or these with MBAs. It’s learnable. It begins with self-awareness – realizing your biases, triggers, and blind spots – and builds by curiosity, listening, crucial pondering, creativity, and decisive motion. These are among the twelve practices I describe within the Strategic Mastery Framework, the spine of my work.
The important thing perception: technique begins with how we predict, not what we all know. Plans change; mindsets endure. Concentrate on what you discover, not what you understand. ask higher questions, somewhat than offering higher solutions.
Sensible Subsequent Steps for Leaders
If you wish to make sure you’re main strategically — not simply operationally — begin right here:
Make clear the ambition. What’s the “win” you’re actually enjoying for?
Title the problem. What’s the impediment in your means?
Set out your choices. Make the exhausting decisions. Technique is as a lot about exclusion as inclusion.
Join intentions to outcomes. Ask how each main initiative contributes to your guiding coverage.
Create house to suppose. Defend time for reflection. It’s not a luxurious; it’s management.
The CEO’s Position
The function of the CEO is to not have all of the solutions — it’s to create the circumstances for good technique to emerge. Which means modelling curiosity, rewarding candour, and welcoming numerous views into the room. It additionally means resisting the urge to leap straight to execution.
Technique is everybody’s enterprise — but it surely should begin with management that values pondering as a lot as doing.
The subsequent time you’re tempted to name a gathering to “evaluate the strategic plan,” pause and ask your self: are we discussing the plan or the technique? The previous will maintain you organised. The latter will maintain you related.
In unsure instances, the CEOs who will thrive should not these with the best plans, however these with the clearest methods – leaders prepared to make exhausting decisions, see the large image, and suppose past the following quarter.
That’s not simply good enterprise. It’s good management.
Written by Charlie Curson. Have you ever learn?
World’s Richest Royals. International Monetary Centres Index.
Richest International locations. World’s Richest Individuals (Billionaires).
The Chief Economists journal, UGGP Information, and the CEO Coverage Institute.
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