Was strategy ever alive?

I was going entitle today’s drivel ‘is strategy dead?’ But as that’s the kind of headline you would find in so called management magazines. More importantly, I’m not convinced strategy is a thing anyway. It may be in the corridors of real power where they have shag pile carpet and real PAs, but down the line between these heady heights and the trenches was strategy ever real.

Aren’t most strategies we talk about in cuff linked shirts in meetings with white boards far from our customer’s experience really about setting plans, establishing policies and sharing our perception of reality?

I think we spend too much time putting activities into a strategic perspective and even worse, use strategy development as a reason not to do something. “Let’s wait until we know where the strategy wants to go before we do this.”

Strategy is great in public sector, when you want some money to do something you ensure the project description ticks as many strategic intents as possible. Firstly, this broadens the number of potential funding sources. Secondly, it ensures that the sponsors of each of these strategies will not block your project as it may be the only one that delivers something resembling whatever it was they committed to delivering.

Wouldn’t we use our time better by systematically:

• breaking through barriers to our success with small focused initiatives that take us in a general sense of direction;
• scanning our environment, qualifying what we see and sharing it with those around us that add to the view;
• understanding our clients (did you know Intel has over 30 anthropologists working for them?);
• defining the rules of the game rather than following our competitors;
• innovating a little everyday.