Strategy is….
Strategy is like software. If you can’t get your ideas off the whiteboard, they have little value.
If you can’t test your thinking with practical experiments, you will never learn.
If you keep talking and don’t do anything, you’re in the same place you were yesterday and falling behind; the world is moving and you’re not.
If you think you have the perfect strategy, you don’t; there is no such thing; strategies can always be improved.
If you believe in your vision so much that you ignore differing perspectives, your insights are dangerously incomplete.
If you think your successful past guarantees a successful future, you are a prime target for disruption.
If your strategy process has become a routine budgeting exercise driven by the calendar, you don’t really have a strategy process.
If you outsourced your strategy to a consulting firm, the probability that you will execute anything has likely gone down; translating ideas into action is your job, not theirs.
If you think your vision statement moves people to act, it doesn’t; most people are too busy to bother.(Besides, it’s your vision statement, not necessarily theirs.)
If you think asking questions is a sign of weakness, nobody can help you. In today’s complex world, strategy is a different game. Learn and adjust, or die.
The Founder of the Lab at UNA and co-author of Strategic Doing: 10 Skills for Agile Leadership, Ed’s work has focused on developing new models of strategy specifically designed to accelerate complex collaboration in networks and open innovation. He is the original developer of Strategic Doing.