Strategy, simplified
Jack Ricchiuto on simplifying strategy:
Every organization, and community, I work with on strategy is very relieved when I liberate them from the inane practice of traditional academic language in the process. I refuse to allow them to waste valuable time debating over the distinctions of: goal, objective, strategy, tactic, and night maneuvers. (I throw in the military reference to “night maneuvers” to inject humor into what is usually a very humorless and uninspired process – and it works.)
What do we do instead? We replace these never-agreed-upon jargon with complex words like: where, why, how, and what.
To be strategic, which is to in plain English is to say, proactive, is to talk about 4 things:
- Where do we want to be in 20 years?
- Why does that matter to us?
- How do we want to get there in the next 2 years? and
- What would be wise for us to do in the next 2 quarters (and weeks) to get there?
These simple and powerful questions give people a remarkable kind of alignment, velocity, and traction they are not used to in the process. What can I say? It works.
via jack/zen ” zenext » Blog Archive » Strategy, simplified.
Discover more from Chris Corrigan
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So much more focused, resulting in practical actions, I’m sure. Wish you’d had a conversation with many of the companies I’ve worked for through the years.
How true! Now to convince people that strategy doesn’t also have to be burdened with masses of background information, ‘proof’, detailed appendices and door-stop inducing ‘noise’
Yes, I had 10 years work experience before going to university and also relate strategy a lot of the time using what, how, and why within a timeline. Many business owners do not have formal management and leadership graduate qualifications and the theory is not used by theses owners. As long as you come up with a strategic plan that is achievable then academic theories do not matter.