Live, Adaptive Strategy

Strategy is choice.

Leaders get paid to make decisions, not just set goals.

We work so hard to create good goals. Goals that can capture the “what” and defer the “how”. Goals that we can measure. Goals that enable accountability.

But our goals are not a strategy.

And we sometimes get feedback, from our managers, that we need to learn to be “more strategic”. But how? Is there training?

In the void, a strategy emerges from someone’s “bundle of ambitions” and quickly coalesces as a set of objectives. But this definition of success will likely seek local optimizations, driven by personal aspirations, and rarely shift from the status quo.

This doesn’t feel right...

If strategy is so critical, why is it so hard to see?

In the beginning, we worked hard to “make the work visible”. Then we asked, “Why are we working on this stuff?”

Then, we worked hard to capture desired outcomes. We worked even harder to make them measurable. Then we found ourselves asking, “Why are we focusing on these goals?”

This recent emphasis on goal setting has obscured the upstream work needed to arrive at the best goals. Upstream work that blends the needs of the customer with the needs of the business. Upstream work that balances the needs of today and the needs of tomorrow. Upstream work that chooses where to innovate, and where to exit.

This is the work of strategy...

Making the tough choices that leverage our finite resources to get competitive advantage.