This is part 3 of the Strategy to Execution Playbook.
Want to know more about this series? Find out more here.

If you've read the first part of this series, you should have a good understanding about what a strategy is (and some traps to avoid creating a bad one) you probably feel like you need to build a new strategy.

But I want to stop you in your tracks and ask you something.

Do you even need a strategy?

That's not a trick question. Strategy is important, it's about choices and commitment to those choices and once made you should defend and champion. It sets the foundation and direction for your business to take action and achieve its goals. But it's much easier to build a strategy than it is to execute on one.

And I can tell you from experience, that when things don't go right or as you envisaged it's too easy to fall into the trap of going back to building a strategy, rather than looking at the real problems and focusing your energy there.

Knowing the difference between Strategy and Execution

Let's be clear, building a strategy can be time consuming and potentially course altering to you, your employees and business as a whole. That shouldn't deter you at all when it's the right choice to revisit. But it's easy to think that defining (or even just refining) a new strategy will solve all your problems when it might cause more problems than you have right now.

It will inevitably happen, you'll be talking with someone in your leadership team, a peer or just in your own thoughts and start to think... do we need to look at our strategy?

Here are some common situations that might feel familiar.

• Our plans didn't go well, we need a new strategy!
• We didn't meet that deadline, we need a new strategy!
• A competitor just released something new, we need a new strategy!
• AI is going to take over, we need a new strategy!

I don't want you to read these and think "oh no, I've fallen for that trap - I best stop what I'm doing" - some of these could absolutely be a reason to stop and build a new (or refine) strategy. 

Before we invest that time, let's challenge ourselves first to make sure we aren't wasting effort by putting it into the wrong place. Let's go through some examples.

"Our plans didn't go well, we need a new strategy!"

This is quite a broad statement, it could be an initiative or plan hasn't gone as intended, either it's gone on too long, didn't return the results we wanted or you might have had to make trade-offs and didn't deliver the originally intended plan.

Is this because of strategy or execution? Is it the fault of the goal or the initiative?

You have to go into diagnosis mode here, understanding the journey the team or individual has gone on up until this point. Hopefully it shouldn't be a surprise, although it might be when you're looking at the results and impact (as you should be).

Be curious and ask open questions to gain understanding of what happened, "Did you have everything you needed?", "What data did we use to make these decisions?", "Did the market change?", "Did we set the right goals?" and my favourite "Did we have enough information to make this commitment?". 

Finding that root cause, sharing the learnings across the company and leveraging that information will help you and others avoid those problems in other areas. That cycle is crucial to a healthy business and I'd encourage you to go in with a growth mindset when going through this process.

The key thing here is that we've identified the real issue. It's not about the strategy, it's about the plan or a specific piece of work. Don't conflate the two and rip up the strategy because something didn't go well, learn from it, leverage that into other parts of the plan and be prepared to review and set out new plans.

A single project shouldn't make or break a strategy

A strategy should come with multiple plans, many options and projects that need to be delivered to make that strategy a reality and for the company to achieve it's goals. If a single project going wrong has derailed your strategy, it was probably a bad strategy to begin with and it might be the right choice to build a new strategy.

More often than not though, it's an opportunity to learn and leverage that failure to strengthen the rest of your plans and make the appropriate choices to commit to other projects or options.

By challenging yourself and others to identify where the problem really is you'll know where to put your energy and solve the actual problem. It's much easier to build a strategy than it is to execute one and you need to know the difference, because the cascade effect is not to be underestimated and you might have thrown away something incredibly valuable by mistake.

"AI is going to take over, we need a new strategy!"

In my career, I've been part of multiple shifts in product and tech. Some like smart phones, app stores and 3G have fundamentally changed things forever. Others like Blockchain haven't had the same impact (yet anyway).

But in both those examples, you can see the flurry of activity and chaos that happens across the world as companies scramble to incorporate these new features, attempting to pioneer and have first mover advantage on a new technology. 

I use AI very deliberately here as an example because since ChatGPT (and all the rest) have exploded onto the market the past 2-3 years you can see in so many products the rush to implement AI. From productivity tools, to estate agents - companies are all very proudly announcing that they have the latest AI innovations creating better experiences for you, the user to continue using their product.

But how many of these companies completely changed their strategy though? 

Once again, this is about knowing the difference of where to spend your energy. 

After having built your strategy, your next step is to decide on what you're going to do. What plans, initiatives, tactics or projects you'll commit to, to deliver your strategy. Maybe you have a few options you haven't decided on yet, or maybe you have a full and complete roadmap. So when something new appears, it's time to review those options - not the strategy.

The core purpose of your strategy is create a foundation for you to make those further commitments. What problems are you solving? Who for? Where? What can you do that no one else is (or can)?

When something new and disruptive comes along, that almost certainly should trigger some analysis on if the choices and commitments you've made for your plans are still right.

Of course that will be disruptive, there's an important decision to make on if you are going to stop working on something to work on something else, like AI. But that doesn't necessarily change your original strategy, it just challenges (and potentially changes) what you are doing to realise that strategy.

I suspect very few companies when pivoting to use AI ripped up their strategies, their foundations on which they made their plans. Instead they looked at how they were going to deliver that strategy, made a change to their plans and delivered on their original strategy, in a brand new way.

Strong Opinions, Loosely Held

I love this phrase. And it definitely applies here once you've separated out your strategy from execution, as it's more often than not how you are delivering your strategy that needs to change, not the strategy itself.

This of course doesn't come without pain or cost. But a good operating model needs to allow this and a strong strategy will continue to provide the foundations no matter what new things disrupt the world.

Have strong opinions about your strategy and your plans, the data behind it, the commitment, the momentum is not something to throw away easily. So be protective and really question where the root cause is and focus your energy there and when the data says change. You change.

When do you actually need a new strategy?

There are going to be times when the right choice is to build a new strategy. It could just be that your existing strategy has come to an end, the timeline that you set out has been fulfilled and you're starting to focus on what comes next.

There's a theme to these, it's about opportunity. Your strategy is laying out your goals and answering the questions on how you're going to go about achieving them. You have to make the decision on if you are still best placed to realise that opportunity with your current strategy, there's plenty of things that might change that. 

Here are some of the more common reasons:

1. Your core assumptions are no longer true
   If something foundational like your market, customer behaviour, technology landscape, or business model has fundamentally shifted, the strategy built on those assumptions is now flawed.

2. You're solving the wrong problem
   If, through research or experience, you discover that the real customer pain point or opportunity isn’t what you thought, your current strategy might be taking you in the wrong direction entirely.

3. The vision or ambition of the business has changed
   If leadership has shifted the long-term direction (e.g. from growth-at-all-costs to sustainable profitability), then the strategy has to follow suit.

4. You’ve repeatedly failed, and execution is sound
   If you’ve delivered cleanly, and teams are aligned and motivated, but you're still not seeing results, it might be the strategic goal or positioning that's flawed.

5. An existential threat or game-changing opportunity arises
   Rare, but when it hits like a platform shift (e.g. mobile, AI) or a sudden market collapse you might have to shift fast or die.

See the difference? These are much more fundamental to your strategy, nothing to do with execution or the choices you've made on projects or initiatives. Knowing that difference means you'll be better equipped to either fix things, or know when you need to start over.

So what should I do? 

This is playbook has equipped you with the skills and knowledge that will guide you to know the difference on whether you need to deep dive into fixing an execution or planning problem, or be looking to create a new strategy. As Ops professionals, you should be in one of the best positions to be able to identify the signals and data to be able to navigate the situation and make the right decisions for you and your business. 

Building strategy can be easy and it's usually incredibly profound and impactful to those in the company. It gives belief, sets direction, creates purpose and fulfilment.

If done right, strategy creates a foundation on which decisions can be made on what you are going to do. What commitments you will make to projects, initiatives or ideas that will help you achieve your goals. 

Want more? Need some help? Call the Wolf.