The Only Thing Missing From Your Strategy….is a Strategy!

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You’ve got a strategic plan.  What you might not have in it, however…is a strategy!  I’ll explain.

The Standard Strategy

Imagine I’m interviewing to be coach of the sporting team, and I’m asked to go through my strategy.

I’d start with an intent: a successful club that wins premierships. And a key aspect of that intent is to: win games.

Then I might be asked “Great…but what’s your strategy?”

So I confidently step up to the whiteboard, draw this up…

…and sit back down knowing the job is mine.

Now, before you knowingly smile, first jump onto your intranet and have a look at your own strategic plan.  I’m thinking you might be looking at something quite similar, perhaps you call them ‘themes’, or ‘pillars’, or ‘strategic priorities’.

We can do better.  The work of Patrick Hoverstadt and Lucy Loh, available to all in their wonderful book Patterns of Strategy gives us an angle that puts us squarely on the path to getting those good intents achieved.

Where Strategy Fits

One of the great points Patrick and Lucy make is that we usually jump from Intent to Plans, missing what’s required in between.   You know those ‘strategy days’ where you do the mission, vision, values thing which leads to a list of initiatives that then cascade to ‘business plans’. 

Strategy is the thing that sits between these two things.

It’s About The  Moves!

What are we talking about with ‘strategy’ then?   Paraphrasing from Patterns of Strategy, I use

How we manoeuvre in our environment relative to the other actors to gain a position of advantage.

What do we need that position of advantage for?  To achieve our intent.  And don’t just think of it as a competitive thing, a position of advantage might be for the greater good of the whole community or a particular group with needs, which is why good strategy is crucial for all in the social sector too.

The Actors

The actors in your environment are the other entities you’re out there with. It’s a brain-bender to see it this way initially, but your most important actors are your customers.  Usually segmented into groups that see you in a similar light, look at them as ‘actors’ in your environment just as much as the other organisations are.  After all, other organisations are also groups of people that see you in a similar light.

The obvious other actors are organisations you compete with.  However, one of the unique aspects you get from Patrick and Lucy’s work is to see collaborators as actors too.  You might be trying to help each other, but you’re still out there together, and you need to think through what strategy will be the best for what you’re trying to get done.

Another class of actor that most of us share is regulators.  Differing authority wielded in various ways…but still an actor.  And don’t forget those who fund you.  Ratepayers, government bodies, investors….they’re in the game too.

Now We Manoeuvre!

If we are clear on the actors in the environment…and can see us in there relative to them…that  takes us to the question of ‘how are we going to manoeuvre in this environment to achieve our intent.’  To just go anywhere is to move.  A ‘manoeuvre’, however means to move deliberately with skill for an intent, which is what strategy is about.

And what do all these manoeuvres entail?  Changing our connection with the other actors in our environment.  Patrick and Lucy use the term ‘structural coupling’ for this connection.

An easy connection to see is your customers – the connection comes through exchange of value, both physically and emotionally.   Any change opens the possibility for that connection to change.  The connection with regulators is between individual freedom and the need for the greater good.  With collaborators it’s about that value thing again. 

And with competitors, it’s like two teams facing off in sport, with the way the interaction occurs…how they connect relative to each other…determining the outcome.  With the ability to choose to play a different sport that you’re better at being available!

Let’s Go Sailing

There’s a simple metaphor used in Patterns of Strategy that makes it even simpler.

You are a boat on the ocean, and your intent is the distant coastline upon which you have a particular place you wish to land.  The two main forces that are going to influence where your boat goes are the wind and the tides. 

The winds are the other actors in your environment, the tides are the longer-term conditions such economic cycles, societal trends.

Here’s a key point.  Your boat is already on the ocean.  Whether you have a strategy or not, those other actors and the trends are already blowing you around the place.   Customers are coming toward you or away from you.  Regulators are watching you or aren’t.  Other organisations want to do deals or take your customers. And funders want their return.

If you’re out there trying to influence anyone to take any action…then you’re out of the dry dock and in the environment.  Whether you like it or not.  So don’t let your strategy be Captain Hiding In Their Cabin.

So, you take the compass reading for your landing spot, aim the bow in that direction and set sail.  Where are you likely to end up?  Not in your landing spot.  Because of wind and tides.

This is what strategy is about…choosing which way you will move given the winds and tides that are out there.  Which is called manoeuvring.  And in any sort of business,  profit, social, sport or otherwise, not only do you take into account the winds…you have the ability to change them too through how you connect to the other actors.   

Bringing It Home

So the strategic work becomes clear (after the Intent bit, but they’re usually good enough).  It’s to identify the other actors in the environment, including the forces they bring into play, that will move your boat around.  Only with this information can manoeuvres be put together that will get us toward those distant lands. 

And not only that, we can think through the moves the other actors might make, then what we might do, then what they might do…just like sitting in a coach’s box watching a game unfold.  And to push the analogy, if we don’t consider other actors and manoeuvres, we’re going into the game assuming it’s going to be like a training drill…no opposition.

Coming up with an actual strategy is not only important and needed…it’s fun!  You know your environment better than you think, it’s just a matter of having the right questions and angles to bring that out.

And as a final bonus, a clear strategy has the sort of cohesive effect on your people that you’ve been trying to get all along…so you could deliver your strategy!

Which is why it’s worth the short, concentrated effort to come up with a good one.