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?