Your strategy sucks

You’re put together strategies daily in your life.

You just don’t realize it.

For example:

You set boundaries between work and personal time to maintain balance and avoid burnout.

Or you focus on one task at a time to ensure quality work and faster completion.

Strategy facilitates the path to reaching desired goals. It is an idea you choose. And goals can be business, career, or personal life.

Often, the path has barriers and risks. Whenever there is a goal, there are challenges.

The problem you have with strategy is confusing it with planning. Planning is not strategy.

The question is how your planning can identify risks, what works, and the shape of the strategy.

When you plan, you’re coordinating a list of events in a logical way or sequence.

You’re basing your vision on assumptions. Planning comes at a later phase, where you allocate resources and budget.

In 2010, after the Haiti earthquake. The Red Cross raised half a billion dollars to build housing for the displaced. but their strategic plans fell through.

The Red Cross's Haiti relief efforts fell short.

Due to inadequate local assessment, poor alignment with local entities. and reliance on contractors unfamiliar with the environment.

Resulting in only six homes built despite significant funds raised link.

That was an example of using planning as a strategy, which more often than not leads to failure.

What you do instead? you design strategy.

Design is deep work, while planning is just the tip of the iceberg.

Martin Roger, one of the well-known strategic thinkers, defines strategy as a choice. Strategy is not a long planning document. it is a set of interrelated and powerful choices that positions the organization to win.

There are five key choices in the Strategy Choice:

1. What is our winning aspiration? the purpose

2. Where will we play? geography, product category, consumer segment, channels

3. How will we win where we have chosen to play? value proposition, competitive advantage

4. What capabilities must be in place to win? activities and configurations

5. What management systems are required to ensure the capabilities are in place? systems and measures to support choices

To bring your aspirations to life, you need to design them. There are many components in the chosen strategy. This is how strategy takes shape or form.

But to do that, you need to know certain skills and methodologies, such as business design to break down the business model canvas (BMC).

And a design thinking approach to understand each of your components, research and analyze. This helps identify the capabilities, skills, processes, tools, and support systems in place to support your chosen strategy.

A design strategist is your best bet for identifying everything needed to shape and test your strategy. Strategy can be a mix of processes, tools, talents, technology, support, and more.

Therefore, you should validate the components of your strategy before executing based on assumptions.

With this approach, you’ll identify gaps, fix issues, or create a new strategy.

This is how you bridge the gap between your decisions, the playing field, capabilities, and support systems.

Strategy is the art of designing an idea to achieve a goal while minimizing issues and resource waste.

Thank you for reading. We’ll talk in the next letter.

Ahmed

P.S three things I can help you with:

1. High-level Discovery

A rapid, big-picture approach to set direction and align stakeholders. Ideal for: Projects needing quick alignment or initial direction-setting.

2. Guiding Discovery

Offering expert guidance and strategic recommendations. Ideal for: Projects seeking expert guidance to address specific challenges.

3. Deep Discovery

A comprehensive, in-depth discovery for complex challenges. Ideal for: Projects requiring thorough understanding and detailed planning.