The Lost Art of Strategy

Strategy has been on my mind lately, a lot.

Why?

Everywhere I look it seems like there just isn’t a real strategy to solve a lot of problems.

In the UK, you see the British government replacing their Prime Ministers monthly because no one has a credible plan to deal with their price of living crisis.

In the US, we fail to see much of a strategy from the Democrats on how they are going to sell their message in the mid-term elections. While the Republicans entire message is we want power so we can rule.

In business, we see companies struggling to find a direction like Meta with the metaverse.

The list goes on.

The core challenge at the heart of these organizations’ struggles and many others can be defined by a lack of or a poor strategy.

My working definition of strategy is a decision making process that helps you focus on the key decisions that will move your organization forward.

In my approach, we talk about:

• Vision: Where We Are Heading?
• Focus: Who is the Customer?
• Value: Why Us?
• Resources: What Do We Need to be Successful?
• Actions: What Will I Do ASAP?

That part is simple.

The more challenging part is why does strategy seem to be a lost art. I’ve identified 5 key reasons that strategy is falling behind when we need it most.

Lack of Attention: The most basic reason that strategy is becoming a lost art is that people just don’t spend enough time thinking about it.

Why is this?

A few reasons:

• Most people aren’t good at thinking strategically.
• The incentives for thinking strategically aren’t present.
• Solutions are often focused on getting impact now…not in a few months.

Because there is a lack of attention to strategy: strategy doesn’t get the emphasis that it deserves.

Lack of Training: It is incredibly difficult to find a good training in strategy.

When the pandemic began, I decided to study a few areas that I wanted to study so that I made sure that my skills were up-to-date. One of those areas was corporate strategy.

I found it difficult to find many good options.

Though I did find good courses from:

• Roger Martin
• Cambridge University with Shaz Ansari and Dr. Kamal Munir
• Scott Galloway and Section 4

Lack of training is a key reason that strategy is becoming a lost art. Because if you don’t know how to think strategically and turn that into action…how do you expect to be a strategist?

Short-term-ism: I call this “Live By The Street. Die By The Street.”

This is the challenge of “Quarterly Capitalism” and the need to always hit next quarter’s numbers. Or, to win the day’s news cycle.

Same difference.

David Gelles wrote a pretty good book called, The Man Who Broke Capitalism, about Jack Welch and his focus on quarterly earnings.

This wasn’t a benign pursuit because it led to GE and Jack Welch acting unethically and, in some cases, fraudulently.

I’m not saying businesses today are acting in a similar matter. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if a story broke as I write this saying that this is happening.

I am saying that short-term-ism is causing organizations to not act strategically.

Tactification: I first heard this term in the Mini-MBA in Marketing.

Mark Ritson used it to describe marketing’s obsession with tactics.

It doesn’t matter where you look, you see this challenge playing out.

“We have a Facebook strategy for this.”

“We have a conference strategy for that.”

“We need to get on Substack because everyone is doing it.”

These are all signs that an organization has lost the plot and is obsessing over tactics.

You need tactics to deliver your strategy, but you have to be extremely careful about predetermining your tactics.

Or, getting lost in the shiny new thing and having to create a “strategy” for that.

Guru-ism: This might be the sister of “tactification” and “short-term-ism”, I’m going to say for my purposes that they share some similarities.

The concept of Guru-ism means that in too many places we see a love affair with the musing of the latest “thought leader” that has ideas on how you “HAVE” to do things to win.

Examples of this include stuff like:

• The overwrought obsession with “starting with why”.
• The BS advice to “create 100 pieces of content a day”.
• “10X” everything…man!

Guru-ism is dangerous because it often steals people’s attention away from creating a strategy that focuses on the one or two things that can move them forward or help their business succeed.

Instead, “Guru-ism” replaces strategy with feel good slogans, hustle culture calls to “crush it”, and goals that might be unachievable or counterproductive.

While there are likely more than these 5 issues that cause organizations to lose sight of what strategy truly is, regaining the ability to use the art of strategy begins by defeating these 5 bad ideas.

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