Strategy as a Persistent Pattern of Behavior

To help informally identify out what an organization’s strategy is, or has been, tease out its persistent pattern of behavior over the past few years. What have people done persistently — beyond tactical, short-term, or irregular activities? How has the strategy built up over time?  How has the consistency of actions and behaviors developed?

Often there is a difference between strategy as discussions and strategy in action. The organization says it is doing one thing but persists in a pattern of behavior and action that is different. Why might this be?

It might be that the written strategy has not been communicated and socialized. Perhaps the management team is not all leaving the room telling the same story. Maybe it was created to justify an investment or another decision.

Examining persistent behavior patterns is an easy way to explore where you may need to adapt and change — and why that change is necessary.

Putting Strategy Ahead of a Plan

A strategy document explains the strategy. It documents the strategy and the thinking behind the strategy. A strategic plan details the plans to achieve that strategy. It documents the how plans for how the strategy will be implemented. It is a plan. it is not a strategy

These ideas and documents serve quite different purposes — they should be different types of documents.

We see a lot of plans that leave out the underlying thinking and rationale for the decisions embedded in the strategy. It makes it much harder to explain the story of the strategy, and much harder for people to interpret the actions for themselves. They just have to follow the plan.

Of course, a strategy must be implementable — it doesn’t exist without action. But it’s one thing to explain the strategies and actions that accompany it. It is something else to explain the detailed plans of the strategy.

A good strategy document has an explanation — a basis for more detailed plans, and programs of change to be derived. A document that explained the strategy and the thinking behind the strategy.

Strategy as a Hypothesis You Constantly Adjust

The more accepted view that strategy and execution are separable activities sets organizations up for failure in today’s world of accelerating change and complexity.  Small gaps in execution begin to seed performance failures or opportunities losses when initial strategies are not altered based on new information or insights.

To be more in tune with the nature of value creation today,  its helpful to think of strategy as a series of hypotheses. 

• Hypotheses about the environment — a view of what’s going on, implications that arise

• Hypotheses about a proposed solution — strategies or approaches to address things

• Hypotheses about implementation —  actions to implement the strategies, address things

It shifts engagement to more of a constant learning approach — prompted by two key questions from execution/experimentation:

•  Is our strategy working and what do we need to do to ensure it works and is implemented?

•  Is it possible that hypotheses are wrong and we need to refine or revise them?