Once you get your head around What is a Strategy, you might ask what makes one good or bad. A well articulated strategy contains 3 things:
- A Diagnosis stating the challenge - what are the crucial things holding you back from your goals? Metaphors are useful here.
- A Guiding Policy which constrains (but doesn’t detail) the specific actions you’ll take to address the diagnosis.
- Coherent Actions that work synergistically and act within the guiding policy to address the diagnosis.
You should treat strategy like a hypothesis, that can be tested and adjusted over time based on empirical evidence/results.
Good Strategies
- are simple & simply stated
- addresses the challenges directly through actions
- don’t recommend competing or conflicting actions
- is Focused - which means saying no to things
- leverage some form an advantage you have
Bad Strategies
- are vague and full of jargon and business-speak
- full of every goal everyone wants to do
- universal buy-in is actually bad, it’s a signal of a lack of the decision to drive decisions
- “blue sky” objectives - where you say the thing you want despite the fact you have no idea how to get there
- reliant on templates and use bland, inarguable but uninspiring sentences
- “We will be the best at serving our customers through a commitment to excellence & integrity” - ok cool.