Ask Christa! Strategy Series (1/3): What is STRATEGY??

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and today's question is, “What is Strategy?”

I’ve received a few similar questions about strategy, as well as some questions about how to find meaning in an organization when you don’t know what the strategy is and how to craft goals when the strategy isn’t clear OR communicated… or clearly communicated.

WHAATTT? You might ask—How can you work in an organization when there isn’t a clear STRATEGY???

Oh…. You’d be surprised… 

Small and mid-sized companies are not held to the same standards as large and enterprise-level companies, especially if you are privately held, and that means…. A lot of businesses often don't have a clear strategy—and if they do, even fewer know how to clearly communicate their strategy. 

They may talk about goals or sales or how they’re going to get things done, but they fail to wrap that up in a “this is what we’re going to do because this is who we are” package, and that’s the basis of strategy: a composite of how you intend to make an impact in your industry or on the world (and you could argue that’s your vision),

combined with what you will provide to your customers and how you will provide it (and you could argue that’s your mission), along with your plan for achieving your big goals, which should make you competitive with expected or excellent demand cycles even during unpredictable times.

And that last piece is about achieving your goals and being competitive even when risks come up, and in the world of strategy, those are key factors.

Some think of strategy as sales, and I know A LOT of organizations have a Head of Strategy or Chief Strategy Officer where the primary focus is sales—but that’s a very tactical way of approaching strategy, and you should probably have a head of sales focused on the strategy of sales. The Strategy that I’m talking about is more than revenue and income sheets. You need a strategy to determine how you’ll go about your goals, and that includes a lot more than revenues and income sheets. It includes how you’ll supply, how you’ll grow—or contract if that’s what’s needed—and how you’ll manage your success in the face of various risks.

In short, strategy enables you to be successful and meet or exceed your goals in spite of uncertainty.

And so, I want you to think about strategy as less hifalutin as it seems, and more about how you put everything together to achieve big goals—the over-arching goals… you have to keep some aspects loose and fluid so they can bend and change quickly, and other aspects tight and rigid so they can maintain shape and form during hard times…

If you’ve ever thought about a big purchase, say a car or a house or the more expensive upkeep of a property, the way you think about what you want to achieve and how you’ll go about it—as well as how it might disrupt your day to day or how you will need to prioritize and shift other needs or push other wishes down the list… you’re thinking about the big purchase in a strategic way, and when you consider the bigger picture of your life and move some things around or set new goals in order to achieve the big purchase: what you do to get there is your strategy.

And the BEST strategies consider the future state—what your strategy is driving toward—within the context of the current state. After all, in order to achieve the goals, the strategy needs to be DO-ABLE, and as such, the execution part of strategy should always be tightly aligned and connected with the strategy part.

We’ve all seen or been a part of an organization or an initiative where strategy is disconnected from reality —where leaders go off to determine what should be done, but they do not have enough perspective or information or experience to know whether it can be done or how it could be done. And for that reason, strategy and execution MUST be tightly aligned; meaning, serious strategic discussions should include enough information to determine options for how to get it done WHILE THE STRATEGIC DISCUSSIONS ARE TAKING PLACE.

It doesn’t have to get down to the minutia, but if you are thinking about opening a giftshop in the center of a high-tourist area and you aren’t yet aware of the business licensing requirements or the ebb and flow of foot-traffic in the area or what the seasonal trends may be or how many other giftshops are already there… then you’ve got a weak strategy no matter how good you might feel about it after creating it.

One of the tips I offer to leaders is that if you aren’t feeling nervous about your strategy, then it’s probably not a good one. Strategy isn’t about creating comfort; it’s about understanding the big picture, where you fit in that big picture, and then feeling confident about what you know AND WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW while creating a plan that accommodates for what you know and what you don’t know.

And that’s a lot. You should always feel a little nervous about all you need to consider when it comes to your strategy—that’s what will keep you alert to when you have to tighten things up or loosen things up as it relates to your strategy.

Remember—it’s a composite for how you put everything together to achieve big goals, reflective of your desired future state.

And so—when someone says strategy, I want you to think about the big goals leading you to a future state in a way that enables things to stay tight when needed, loosen up when needed, get through choppy waters and smooth sailing. It’s the big plan that is aligned to how your organization fits into the world, an understanding of those they provide the best products and services to, a plan to continue meeting or exceeding organizational goals in spite of how many things may change or develop while achieving those goals—things that may or may not be known or understood at the time of developing the strategy.

Now, because of the number of questions I’m getting about strategy—which I love, by the way, because strategy and strategy execution is my life—there will be three segments about strategy that I’m putting into a Strategy Series: this segment, which reviews a HOPEFULLY RELATABLE and easy way of thinking about strategy, then two other segments, which will address two scenarios about either a perceived lack of strategy or how to manage in an organization where it feels like there is no strategy… and when the strategy isn’t clear or communicated enough to align to it and create individual goals, where you feel like the work you are doing isn’t that meaningful because you don’t see how it fits into the bigger picture.

For this segment’s resources, I included a blog titled “What Is Strategy (and Why Should You Care?), written by Kristina Halvorson on the Brain Traffic site. Her writing aligns to some of this discussion, although she goes far deeper into additional nuances—so keep in mind that for most organization, strategy should remain simple with only enough levels needed to measure progress AND measure whether your strategy process is working for everyone.

Speaking of simple, I also share a have fantastic video from Harvard Business School’s Felix Oberholzer-Gee, and what I really like about his 9 ½ minute video is how he demystifies the concept of strategy and shares my view that strategy isn’t this big, elite, only-business-school-people-can-do function of a business.

It’s far more simple than that. He goes into the concept of creating value, some general concepts of profitability, and willingness to pay vs willingness to sell, and I veer a bit from his focus on creating value so straightly aligned with profitability only because when I’m teaching and talking about strategy, I like to keep some of the business speak out of it, but it’s a great video. I’ve included a write-up from the HBS business blog also.

By the way— my process is that I review the questions as they come in, combine when possible, then frame my answers right away. I then seek additional resources based on how I’ve framed my answer, so it’s important to know that I am reading and seeing almost all of the added resources I share for the first time after I’ve framed my answer. After I review the additional resources, I decide which ones I will share based on what I think will offer the greatest value.

I say that because Harvard Business School might feel like the first place to go to, but I included what I did because I liked how simple and easy the content is—and how it reinforces that strategy should not feel like a special club where only certain people are allowed to play. We are all strategic thinkers in a variety of ways, and we should all feel capable of building and managing strategy and execution plans if that’s what we want to do. Like everything else, we just need to learn and practice!

Alright, there it is—another segment. As always, keep sending in your questions and I will keep up. I will also post more frequently soon. Head over to my website, AskChrista.com. That's Christa with a CH to submit your question. And while you're there, sign up for the weekly newsletter too. You'll receive a free issue of the Survivor's Guide to Business Challenges and Workplace Issues. Then the weekly newsletter, of course, which I issue on Sundays. So you have a few tips, boosters, and some comic relief to prep you for the work week.

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