Strategy as Hypothesis

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 losses when initial strategies are not altered based on new information or insights.

It's 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 proposed solutions — strategies or approaches to address things

  • Hypotheses about execution — actions to implement the strategy and manage things

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

  • Is our strategy working, and what do we need to ensure successful implementation?

  • What hypotheses are possibly wrong or need to be revised?