Business Strategy and Biscuits
Strategy IS NOT Planning
That thing we do when we get a few people, mostly executives, into a board room with a tea table and biscuits as a courtesy and maybe because of how long it might take to discuss the way forward and make a list of corresponding actions to take, including a budget is not ‘strategy’. But we often mislabel it “strategy session”. It is planning or perhaps, budgeting.
Planning is thinking about activities requisite to accomplish a goal. It often involves making a list, doing budgets, designating and assigning roles. We can even have two, “Plan A” and “Plan B”.
Don’t let strategy become planning
Strategy is the making of an integrated set of choices that connectively position the firm in its industry so as to create a sustainable advantage relative to competition and deliver superior financial returns. (Source HBR)
Whilst Strategy can be executed with a plan, however, it is not the plan and the process of designing a plan is not the same as doing strategy.
Strategy is about the focus of your business. How will you win?
Let’s take a hypothetical example — Jane’s Kitchen versus Cory’s kitchen. Whilst Jane’s kitchen focuses on providing good food to customers which is very much expected, Cory’ kitchen differs ominously.
Cory’s kitchen focuses on adding meaning to every bite of food and being the leading restaurant in the country.
The job of the strategy is to inform your choices, to tell you the initiatives that will likely produce the result you want.
Strategy is a singular thing, and the very heart of your strategy must be to be the leader or the best, like Cory’s kitchen.
On the strength of strategy, you can design initiatives, plans, budgets and make choices that fulfill your strategy.
So what is a strategy session?
It’s not time set aside to deliberate on a set of activities with timeframes and resources. It’s not a visioning session.
A strategy session is where you make decisions on how you will win while taking into account each step of the strategy framework (Source: Peter, Uhuru).
There are a few questions to ask in a strategy session. What is our winning ambition? Where will we compete? How will we win? What capacities are requisite? What creative and management systems need to be in place to achieve and sustain the strategy?
Tomorrow, I’ll write about how to hold a strategy session, maybe design an agenda you can always copy. Would you like that?
