Strategy has become the term that covers "anything I thought about for more than 30 seconds."
Describe your approach, service, team, or experience as "strategic" and you imply "not total crap." Brand and marketing fields seem particularly hooked on the word. ESG has spawned a whole new host of strategies that all talk about being connected to the overall business strategy but almost never are. There are people strategies, tech strategies, data strategies, transformation strategies, communication strategies, and redundancy strategies.
99% of the time, these are simply well-thought-through plans.
It's just words — why get worked up about it?
Call it a strategy. Call it a plan. Call it nothing but get it done anyway. Does it really matter?
Yes.
By calling everything a strategy, everyone a strategist, and every approach strategic, "real" strategy — meaning the overall business or corporate strategy — has been lost in the crowd.
Most businesses, unless very large and complex, thrive best with a single strategy. Everything else is the plan or plans that deliver that strategy. Multiple strategies lead to confusion, unhealthy tensions, missed opportunities, unnecessary risks, burnout, and delays. Not having a "real" strategy leads to exactly the same problems.
The definition of business strategy
I've not been able to find a strong definition that fits what I mean when I talk about business strategy, so I've sharpened my pencil and written one:
business strategy (noun) — Your business's long-term future goals, your best current hypothesis for how to achieve them, and a set of related decisions. Involves hypotheses and trade-offs: not just a plan, but a way to decide and act on what matters most.
It is a hypothesis, not a certainty. Goal-oriented rather than a continuation of the status quo. It involves making trade-offs. It tries hard not to be myopic. And it is about the business as a whole.
Vision vs mission vs strategy
Another area that often trips people up: the difference between purpose, vision, mission, strategy, and plans. I'm a fan of one "north star" which can be articulated as either a purpose, vision, or mission — a core concept that can be tweaked for different audiences rather than three competing statements.
Your strategy, as defined above, gives you a process for getting closer to your north star without tripping over obstacles or yourself too badly along the way. What you do day-to-day to execute and refine that process is your plan, roadmap, or delivery schedule.
Why you need a business strategy
Strategy can be the glue that binds a frantically scaling business together. It can be the glasses that allow you to see more clearly and make better decisions. It can be the force that keeps an established business sufficient steps ahead of irrelevance.
You probably have a purpose or vision. You need a strategy to give you a good chance of actually achieving it. Otherwise it's blind hope.
You and all the employees in your business are likely pretty busy every day. You need a strategy to confidently focus on the things that matter most, not on whatever feels most urgent. Otherwise you're doing for doing's sake — and that's draining.
If you have investors and a Board of Directors, you need a strategy to help them add value and challenge at the right level, and feel reassured. Without it you risk blurring the lines between board and management — and anyone who's been in that position knows the unwelcome consequences.
How is a business strategy different from a business plan?
A business plan typically describes what you intend to do and how — it is operational and relatively concrete. A business strategy is the hypothesis that underpins the plan: a view about what long-term goals are worth pursuing, why, and what trade-offs you are willing to make to pursue them. The plan delivers the strategy. Without the strategy, the plan is a set of activities with no guiding logic.
How do you know when you have a real strategy versus just a plan?
A real strategy involves hypotheses and trade-offs. If your strategy is consistent with every possible action and doesn't actually rule anything out, it's not a strategy — it's a description of what you're already doing. A good test: can you articulate what you have decided not to do, and why? If not, you probably have a plan dressed up as a strategy.
