Why strategy feels hard right now

Most teams are not short on ideas, they are short on clarity. Markets shift, competitors copy faster, and everyone has data. The real constraint is focus. Strategy is the discipline of choosing what you will do, and what you will not do, then aligning the organisation behind those choices.

Strategy is four decisions, not a hundred slides

When a strategy is weak, it usually fails on one of these four decisions.

Decision 1: Where will we play

Define your playing field in plain language. Which customers, which geographies, which segments, which price bands, which channels, which problems you will own. The best strategies are specific enough that a competitor can tell what you are prioritising.

Quick test: if you doubled investment tomorrow, would your team know exactly where to put it?

Decision 2: How will we win

This is your advantage, not your ambition. Winning is a mechanism, not a slogan. It can come from distribution, product experience, switching costs, cost position, data, partnerships, brand trust, or operational speed. Pick the few that matter most and make them measurable.

Quick test: if your advantage disappeared for six months, would customers still choose you.

Decision 3: What capabilities must be world class

Capabilities are repeatable strengths, not one time projects. This is the bridge between a strategy and execution. If your strategy says enterprise growth, you need enterprise sales motion, customer success, security, procurement readiness, and implementation capacity. If your strategy says premium product, you need product craft, reliability, and a tight feedback loop.

Quick test: can you name the 3 to 5 capabilities you will build over the next 12 months, and what you will stop doing to fund them?

Decision 4: What management system will keep this real

Most strategies die because the operating rhythm does not change. Your management system is how decisions get made weekly and monthly. It includes incentives, metrics, governance, review cadence, and who has the authority to say no.

Quick test: if I joined your leadership meeting, would I see the strategy in the agenda, metrics, and tradeoffs?

A simple way to pressure test your strategy

Ask these five questions and be brutally honest.

1. What are we explicitly not doing

If there are no tradeoffs, there is no strategy.

2. What customer problem are we solving better than anyone

Not features, not technology, the job the customer is hiring you for.

3. What is the one metric that proves we are winning

Choose one primary metric that cannot be gamed, and a small set of supporting metrics.

4. What must be true for this strategy to work

Write assumptions like a checklist. Market growth, pricing power, partner behaviour, sales cycle length, retention, regulatory shifts. Then track them monthly.

5. What would change our mind

Define the kill criteria in advance. This keeps you rational when momentum and sunk cost show up.

Turning the strategy into an action plan in one page

You only need one page to make a strategy operational.

The one page template:

1. Where to play
2. How to win
3. Top 3 capabilities to build
4. Top 3 initiatives for the next 2 quarters
5. What we will stop doing
6. Owner and metric for each initiative

If you cannot fit it on one page, it is usually not clear enough yet.

My closing view

A good strategy is not the most intelligent answer, it is the most executable set of choices. Clarity creates speed. Speed creates learning. Learning creates advantage. If you can make the four decisions above explicit, you will already be ahead of most teams.

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