The strategy-as-a-plan trap

I’ve spent the past several years focused on the craft of strategy. Practice and study have shown patterns separating good from ‘bad’ strategy – and even good from no strategy. This is the first of a series of eight traps and tips to avoid them.

❌ This first trap may be the most prevalent. It’s when you produce an unprioritised action list, rather than a tight, cohesive strategy. And unprioritised includes lists with ‘priority 1’, ‘priority 2’ etc. When leaders treat an action list as a strategy, it’s an indicator that the real work of strategy hasn’t been done. Those lists have their place, but only after the work of strategy.

If you’ve fallen into this trap, you may have:

• No single, clear ambition or picture of ‘winning’

• Numerous actions potentially grouped under themes but with no hierarchy or real prioritisation

• Actions covering most of your organisation

• Scatter-gun actions that are unrelated to each other and incapable of collective impact

• Measurement of completion but limited measurement of impact

• Ill-defined processes for gaining and processing feedback.

✅ The opposite of list-making is choice-making – the heart of strategy. This is about the tough work of making an integrated set of choices that clearly define what’s in and what’s out. Which arenas will you play in (and not)? How will you win specifically in those? What combined advantage will you bring to the market? To do this, everyone involved knows the problem you’re tackling. Analysis has been turned into succinct insight. Many ideas have been thoughtfully taken off the table in favour of a few. The result is a true ‘theory of impact’. And it’s clear how your strategy will cascade through your organisation.

💡 To avoid the planning trap, ask whether you can describe briefly the theory (strategy) guiding the choices that made the cut. If you can’t do that, your work starts there. Be sure the strategy framework you use discourages the creation of lists as proxies for real decision-making. If you already have a plan, not a strategy, and you can’t yet start again, prioritise what’s there based on collective impact, not time, cost or ease. If your leadership team lacks real understanding of strategy, and this trap is a risk area, consider watching and sharing with them Roger Martin’s A Plan Is Not A Strategy.