How do I know if my company has a good strategy?
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I am often asked how a company knows if it has a good strategy. My thoughts:
- The strategy helps organizations make decisions about what they do and what they will not do.
- The strategy helps you allocate budget to the most important areas and acts as a justification for not funding areas that fall outside of the strategic goals.
- Most people who make decisions understand the strategy, and they use it to inform their decisions.
- The competition isn’t confused about the position an organization INTENDs to take in the market (please note INTEND. A strategy is a statement of directional intent, not a fulfillment of vision).
- People don’t wander around trying to figure out what to do or how to find money to keep projects going (note here, this is not about execution of strategy, which may be wanting even where a good strategy exists).
- Projects get killed because they don’t make sense against the strategy – and sometimes for that reason alone—nothing to do with capability, competency or desire. The project would distract from strategic intent and, therefore, isn’t a good investment – and it goes away.
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Very good list; thanks. Your final entry is, in my experience, perhaps the most important. In the same way that one is as well or better known by one’s enemies as one’s friends, so a strategy is given as much definition– and is accelerated as much– by what it excludes as what it allows. Far too many “good” strategies are frittered away by a compulsive concern with/attachment to “possibilities.”