Strategy – “Embrace the Angst”
George Paras reminded me of something this week that really resonated.
How many times have you heard the expression “A Plan Is Not a Strategy”?
It is a truism that doesn’t help much. Just Words . . .
To be fair, one of my favourite “-isms” is “Hope is Not a Strategy”, but that’s another topic.
George pointed me to an excellent, brief, simply articulated talk by Roger Martin, the renowned thinker, author and speaker, that absolutely nails the topic..
If you are involved in “planning” or “strategy” of any sort (and let’s be honest, who isn’t?), it is a wake-up call.
Plans are comforting. Plans are largely about what we can control. Reassuringly easy (relatively) to develop but miss the bigger point.
Roger describes the essence of defining “WHY” we choose to play on a particular field or segment of business, rather than any other one.
And HOW we will be better than anyone else on that field (our market, internal or external) in serving the customer, and thus accomplish our key objective.
Our Strategy has to be coherent (internally consistent) AND do-able . . ,
But here is the key.
Strategy is a hypothesis.
It needs to be continuously tested.
Continuously refined.
Kind of like an AI model 😉
If Plans are about what we can CONTROL, then Strategy is about INFLUENCE and AGILITY.
Living in a world where we don’t control anything, but can only influence, and where we need to continuously test and refine our hypothesis, is not comfortable.
We just need to “Embrace the Angst” of not knowing . . . .
“Here is what we believe will happen. We can’t prove it in advance.”
And there was me saying “Hope is not a Strategy”! 😉
Maybe I should rephrase, and state “Hope is not a Plan” . . .
Nine and a half minutes well invested.
Embrace the Angst!
Thanks for reading . . .
Strategy – “Embrace the Angst”
