UNCERTAIN 2022? A WELL-DEFINED STRATEGY CAN HELP

Strategy is not a goal in disguise, nor is it something for the upper echelons alone. It is a plan describing the choices and trade-offs that must be made organisation-wide to achieve the desired outcome

- Rita McGrath & M Muneer

It is unfortunate that strategy has come to mean just about anything that those in an organisation deem to be important. So we have strategic human resources, strategic finance, and even strategic procurement! When things aren’t predictable, solid strategies are essential – they help provide guidelines and act as guardrails. When well crafted, they get you past the frozen-in-the-headlights reaction many have to uncertainty – as we have witnessed in 2020.

Strategy started as a concept in military thinking. One of the most misunderstood ideas in strategy is that decisions are made at the ‘strategy’ level and everybody else just executes. The purpose of a good strategy is to allow smooth decision-making throughout the organisation, but particularly at the ‘edges’ where real information about what’s going on lives.

There is a multitude of definitions for strategy but what is common is that it’s all about making choices – both of what to do and even more importantly, what not to do. There are two main reasons that having a clear strategy is helpful: the first is that resources are not unlimited, and the second is competition – for customers, for talent, for other assets and for attention.

No business can just try every idea that comes to its leaders – you need to have some way of selecting from alternatives and setting priorities. As for competition, even if you did demonstrate that a course of action led to success, others will try to copy, match or otherwise surge into the same space.