Strategy isn't Planning

June 28, 2023 (~5 minute read).

I drew this graphic after reading Richard Rumelt's excellent book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy in order to explain the concepts of strategy to those I coach in technical leadership. It distils the essence of the model Rumelt puts forward to help guide the process of working a strategy.

• Challenge proceeds a Strategy
  Strategy is fundamentally a response to challenge; you need to understand its shape and size in order to successfully navigate it and understand what a Desirable Outcome looks like. Your Desirable Outcome is rarely about output (e.g. "make $100k per-year") but outcome (e.g. "retain additional 10% of monthly subscribers").

• Diagnosis is the key
  It is all too tempting to lurch into action immediately when a challenge presents itself and try to put in concrete steps for addressing. Smaller challenges can be seen off with this, but its worth taking the time to understand a challenge more holistically, and particularly what Sources of Power you can bring to bear on it. Power is anything you can leverage against the challenge, such as skills, people, technologies, processes, etc. I recommend Facts, Assumptions, Beliefs, and Wardley Mapping as useful tools for diagnosis.

• Strategic Choices face the Unknown
  Strategy is all about the choices you make in the face of the unknown; it's like setting out your stall, your principles, for dealing with the challenge. It isn't a plan in and of itself; it's what drives the plan. Understanding this difference is essential, and I recommend Roger Martin's "A Plan Is Not A Strategy" video for the Harvard Business Review on Youtube.

• Your Guiding Policy encapsulates your Strategic Choices
  "Alignment" is oft talked about, seldom achieved. Why? Because the people defining and executing the strategy do not have a common view of the world, because the strategy isn't written down anywhere. The executors therefore do not have the chance to check their decisions against the strategy, and this is where drift starts. Write down your policy for dealing with the challenge. Include KPI's, what you are prioritising, specifically what isn't a priority; draw the box to let people do good work.

• Your Guiding Policy guides actions taken
  The excellent book The 4 Disciplines of Execution lays out a plan for executing actions, but defining good actions is complex. A good Guiding Policy should enable the definition of actions over time which can be executed. This is a cycle: Plan, Do, Check, Act. Some actions work, some actions don't. Its important to continually evaluate your actions against your policy, and your policy towards your desired outcome.

• Its all cyclical
  Challenges are met by Strategy; Strategy drives actions which bring about Change; and Change creates new Challenges; its all a loop. Sometimes your strategy will live to see the desired outcome, sometimes your strategy won't succeed because you learn new things. Dust off, re-diagnose.

In my next post, I'll show a worked example of this in a technical setting. In the meantime, if you have any feedback, please do share it with me on LinkedIn.