In almost every company we work with, five obstructions emerge and have to be removed before strategy becomes a practical tool for making decisions and delivering results.
Killer one: it has become too complex
Not because the company is big, but because of the felt need that strategy should involve multi-page, multi-meeting documents. Executives have less time, too much information and no soak time for the critical few data points. The cycle starts so early and gets so operational that it no longer cascades aligned decisions to the people in the market. Simplify to one page: three to five assumptions with their implications, a product-market matrix with criteria and financials in each cell, and no more than three goals for the year with target, source and owner.
Killer two: assuming every executive is a strategist
Few executives get formal exposure to strategy beyond a course or two. Treating it as an innate gift means nobody builds the skill. Give the team a common framework and a repeatable set of questions, and the gap closes fast.
Killer three: no decision criteria
Without visible criteria, every product launch and project request is debated on its merits, which means on the strength of its sponsor. Criteria the whole executive team can recite are what let a company say no.
Killer four: strategy as an annual event
A retreat in January and a binder on the shelf by March. Markets move monthly. A strategy that is not reviewed monthly, with root cause on what went red, is a photograph of a decision, not a decision.
Killer five: no ownership
Strategy written by a firm, or by the CEO alone, is received by the team rather than built by it. What people did not sweat through, they do not defend when the first quarter goes sideways.
Then and now
Written in 2014. The five killers have not changed; the time it takes to remove them has. The MOVE® system puts the one-page answer to all five in weeks rather than months, with AI doing the analysis that used to take the time.
Monday
Score your company against the five, honestly, one to ten. The lowest score is where the next quarter's strategy work should start.
