Strategy does more than convey intent, aspiration, or desire, it provides direction for how goals are to be achieved, and challenges overcome.
Having a strategy is different than having strategic statements. Strategies are hard to develop. Strategic statements are easy. Strategic statements are phrases like
- Our partners will recognize us as the easiest organization to do business with
- We will provide service second to none
- We will be an analytics-based organization
- We will maintain a top quartile expense position
- We will maintain top quintile digital experience ranking
There is nothing wrong with these statements, per se, but they are not a strategy as they are not actionable (i.e., what should a team do, specifically, to address each statement?). They can be useful to communicate intent, aspiration, or desire people can relate to, supporting simple messaging. But these alone do not provide a team with the direction required to determine what action they should take to achieve a goal or resolve a meaningful challenge, which is what strategy does. Companies and teams need both. With a bit of effort, strategic statements can be scripted to expand on a vision statement. They can provide an emotional hook and the motivation for action. But if you develop a set of statements that are too broad, they will not have meaning, as is the case with many of the bullet points above.
As an extreme example, at the highest level every company is trying to do the same three things: increase revenue, decrease expenses, and improve customer experience. It would be absurd for a company to work to achieve the opposite. If these were your strategic statements (or worse, your strategy), it would be difficult to describe how your strategy is different from any other. Ultimately, every company is trying to do these same three things but with different priorities around them and different approaches for achieving them.
Specificity matters. Say you are the leader of a sales organization. To state you will increase revenue by expanding distribution is more helpful than not saying it, but it is still too high level; the team cannot easily translate that into a clear, aligned set of actions. Stating your team will expand distribution by
- 15% in current distribution channels over three years primarily through a new preferred partner program
- 5% over two years in adjacent channel X in which the company does not currently do business by hiring a new sales team to focus on that channel and
- 5% over 18 months in the mobile interaction channel through improvements in the top three journeys
begins to form the building blocks of a strategy, providing teams with better guidance for how they may act to achieve the strategy. Of course, goals like these should be rooted in appropriate market analysis and internal capability assessments and directly link to overall company goals. Articulating goals is a start, but if you stop there you are merely goal setting. Identifying the challenges to achieving each goal is fundamental to creating an effective strategy. Asking the question “what would have to be true” is a powerful way to identify challenges and potential approaches for resolving them. I will discuss this question more fully in an upcoming post.
As a friend of mine says, “If you can take your strategy and put any other company name at the top and no one knows the difference, it isn’t a strategy. It’s just a bunch of platitudes.” He’s right. If your team doesn’t know anything about how you expect to achieve a goal or overcome a challenge, you don’t have a strategy. Move beyond strategic statements alone. Be thoughtful about the level of specificity in your strategy and how each part of your team contributes to achieving it and you will have a far greater likelihood of success.
Share your thoughts below.
Does your leader provide you with a clear enough strategy for you to take aligned action? Or do you primarily see strategic statements? How about what you provide to your teams?
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