What if the strategy you're proudly presenting to the board is nothing more than a glorified to-do list?
In boardrooms everywhere, thick binders of forecasts, budgets, and initiatives
are being sold as “strategy.” But here’s the uncomfortable truth: a long-term
plan is not a strategy — and mistaking one for the other can quietly kill your
company's edge.
"The
essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."
— Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, 1996
🎯 The Real Difference: Strategy
vs. Planning
According
to Michael Porter in his landmark article What Is Strategy? (Harvard
Business Review, 1996), strategy is about making painful trade-offs —
choosing a unique position, deliberately doing some things and not others. It’s
about how you will win, not just what you will do.
By
contrast, planning is about execution. It deals with setting goals,
mapping timelines, assigning resources — but it assumes that you already
know what the right thing to do is. As Roger Martin wrote in The Big Lie of
Strategic Planning (HBR, 2014), plans provide comfort, but true strategy
forces you to make bets in uncertain conditions — and take responsibility
for those bets.
“The
first rule of strategy is focus. Most companies don’t have a strategy because
they’re unwilling to make the hard choices.”
— Roger L. Martin, HBR, 2014
❌ Why You Should Be Worried
A
beautiful slide deck filled with KPIs and milestones may look impressive — but
it can hide the absence of strategic thinking. You can hit every target
in your five-year plan and still lose the market because your competitors made
bolder, more focused moves.
Failing
to distinguish strategy from planning leads to:
- ✅ No clear differentiation in the market
- ✅ Paralysis in the face of uncertainty
- ✅ A culture of execution without direction
✅ Ask Yourself — and Your
Leadership Team:
- What are the non-negotiable
trade-offs we’ve made?
- What are we deliberately
choosing not to do?
- Are we following a plan, or
are we making strategy-driven decisions?
If these
questions are hard to answer, your strategy may not exist — no matter how long
your roadmap is.
🔚 Key
Reminders
·
Clarify Strategic Choices: Identify and communicate the unique
value proposition and the trade-offs your company is willing to make.
·
Separate Strategy from Planning: Develop a strategy that defines what
you aim to achieve and why, then use planning to determine how to
get there.
·
Embrace Uncertainty: Recognize that strategy involves navigating
uncertainty and making informed choices without complete information.
You can read the whole Growth.exe magazine @ https://growth-exe.blogspot.com/
Farhad Hafez Nezami
May
2025
Photo asset downloaded from Freepik and a link to our website (www.freepik.com).
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