Developing and reviewing strategy

We have helped a number of organisations develop or rethink their strategy. We have also helped with making business cases for change and new investment in technology.

In his book ‘Good strategy, bad strategy. The difference and why it matters [1]’, Richard Rumelt says: ‘good strategy is the exception, not the rule. More and more organizational leaders say they have a strategy but they do not’. There can be a lot of confusion around defining strategy. Strategy is not well intentioned but vague goals. Strategy is not:

• vision : where we want to be-an indeterminate future goal
• mission: why the organization exists -the motivation for being in the business
• values: what we believe in and how we will behave

The above may be valuable but they are not strategy.  According to Rumelt: ‘A good strategy has…a kernel [that] contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy and coherent actions.’ So strategy is about what organisations do.