You Are Already Doing Strategy

In Case Nobody Told You: You Are Already Doing Strategy Work

TL;DR

The common idea that strategy is just for the boardroom: 100% wrong thinking! Many of the decisions you make, sometimes as small as drafting that email or casually prioritizing projects, play a part in shaping your company’s strategy. If you are working on an important “problem” of your company, you are already doing strategy. Being clear about that helps you do the right thing. But even more: Companies being clear about that and creating a great inclusive way of working on strategy have a chance to be much more successful.

Strategy Is All Around You

In one of my last posts and videos, I explained how hard it was for me to get involved in strategy. While that’s true, there’s also a surprising flip side. The old-school view of strategy makes it seem like an elusive, high-level concept reserved for top executives in boardrooms. This perception can feel alienating and make you feel excluded.

But really, I was doing strategy all the time, and nobody told me. And I didn’t realize. The people around me probably didn’t realize they were working on strategy either, so they couldn’t pull me in. This was a huge part of what felt off.

Strategy is often like so many of the big words; it rarely carries the big label. When people talk about innovation, it’s often because they aren’t actually innovating. Innovators simply innovate without needing to label it. Strategy works the same way. If you’re tackling significant problems within your company, you’re doing strategy. Don’t wait for a formal strategy project or kick-off meeting to be invited to. This applies whether you’re an employee or a consultant. Strategy is rarely explicitly called strategy. Understanding this can change your entire approach to your work.

In the end, strategy involves everyone working on the bigger issues, from the boardroom to those installing critical servers. For this to be effective, as many people as possible should have some education on strategy, making it more open and inclusive.

(Of course this view always carries the opposite danger of “there will be no system to integrate all that strategy work!)

Everyday Strategy in Action

Many of us don’t realize that we’re already engaged in strategic activities. Recognizing this helps us see value in our everyday work and decisions and how we impact the company’s success. It increases our sense of achievement and helps us speak up and influence at the right moments.

Here are a few situations where people do strategy. It might be you. And there might be no system around you acknowledging that and actively pulling you in. See if you see yourself in any of these:

1. Product Managers Working on their Roadmap: Prioritizing features isn’t just about keeping the product fresh. It’s about alignment with the company direction towards future markets and technological trends.
2. HR Professionals Crafting Training Programs: By focusing on specific skills, HR directly influences the company’s ability to innovate and stay competitive.
3. Marketing Teams Choosing Campaign Themes: The right campaign can shift market perceptions and create significant competitive advantages.
4. … many more like these

In addition to these roles, strategy is indirectly embedded across many other functions in any organization:

• Customer Service Leaders enhancing protocols to boost satisfaction and retention.
• IT Specialists selecting technologies that align with growth goals and secure operations.
• Finance Teams managing budgets to align with strategic objectives and ensure sustainable investments.

The point is that all these decisions are not only influenced by strategy but also – vice versa – influence strategy. It’s a continuous, interconnected process. We all know the alternative: endless up-and-down reporting, committees, and decisions made at the wrong level. We’ve all been there.

By understanding that strategy stretches across all levels, roles, and departments, we will see a more integrated system to achieve our company’s overarching goals. If that’s missing, here are some symptoms you might have experienced.

Missing Strategic Alignment And That Sinking Feeling

Ever get that sinking feeling when making decisions, thinking, “This could be totally right or completely wrong”? That usually means strategic alignment is missing. Here’ what’s happening and what it means:

• Lack of Clear Strategic Goals: Without clear goals, it feels like you’re shooting in the dark. Hit or miss.
• Poor Communication: When management levels and departments don’t communicate, you’re left guessing the company’s direction.
• Limited Access to Data: Your decisions are only as good as the data you have. No data, no alignment.
• Resource Constraints: Limited resources make it tough to prioritize, throwing things out of whack. Cool that you worked on that product/feature, but what if marketing can’t keep track? (or the other way around.)
• Ambiguous Company Vision: If the vision isn’t clear, you have nothing to align your efforts with.
• Organizational Silos: Departments working in isolation lead to puzzle pieces that don’t fit together. The biggest source for customer confusion.
• Inadequate Feedback Loops: No feedback means it remains unclear if the decisions are working in the right way or not.
• High Stakes and Pressure: The bigger the impact, the more fear and doubt you feel, which hurts alignment.
• Personal Accountability: Fear of messing up can stop you from aligning your actions with the company’s strategy.

These alignment gaps lead to poor decision-making, wasted resources, and no real progress toward goals. Recognizing and fixing these issues is key to making strategy work for everyone.

Simple Example of Strategic Decisions in Action

Context: The product department is trying to improve product onboarding but lacks clarity on whether to focus on growth or churn prevention. In the past, there has been no clear direction, and whatever the team did, the feedback was often surprising. This lack of clarity is a common strategic dilemma that can significantly influence product and service design. This will finally leave the customer confused over the onboarding flow as for them it now feels somewhere in the middle between “nice educating” and “being rushed to a decision.”

Small Decision: The product team faces a choice in designing the onboarding experience for new users:

• Option A: Implement a comprehensive, detailed onboarding process.
• Option B: Opt for a quick, high-level onboarding that covers basic functionalities.

Impact and Long-term Consequences:

• Option A (Comprehensive Onboarding): This choice clearly aligns with the churn prevention focus. Making sure that new users fully understand and utilize all product features increases user engagement and satisfaction. Long-term, it could lead to higher customer loyalty and lower churn rates, as users who feel more competent with the software made an informed decision and are likely to continue using it. However, the detailed process might slow down the initial adoption rate as some users could be overwhelmed by the amount of information.
• Option B (Quick Onboarding): This option supports the growth focus. It reduces initial barriers to entry, encouraging rapid adoption and catering to users who prefer to learn by doing rather than undergoing extensive tutorials. In the long run, it might increase the number of new users more quickly and help market penetration and growth. However, it may also result in higher churn rates later if users fail to discover or understand deeper functionalities of the product on their own.

Strategic Alignment: Both options can be totally right or wrong, depending on the strategic context. In reality, this will be a bit more nuanced (sorry). Both choices have distinct strategic implications. The decision should be informed by a deeper understanding of the company’s overarching goals—are we aiming to build a loyal, long-term user base or are we focusing on capturing as much of the market as quickly as possible? Understanding these strategic priorities can guide the product team in making a decision that aligns with the company’s long-term objectives.

Inclusive Strategy is Winning

I wanted to make you aware of how every role, from product managers to HR professionals and probably you, very probably already contributes strategically to your company’s goals. The idea that strategy happens just in the boardroom is plain wrong and leads to decoupling between all the elements of strategy: vision, goals, “execution,” implementation. It’s everywhere. That explains why you might have felt excluded where you should have been included to make the right decisions with more certainty. Realizing that opens a new world for you and helps you to be deliberate about that.

Embracing an inclusive view of strategy aims to empower everyone, regardless of their role, to actively contribute to the company’s direction. Each decision, whether about product features or marketing campaigns, is part of the strategy.

While many might feel the way I describe it here, there are few environments which built a system to factor all this in. It’s not super hard, but different. And it requires a bit of education.

The Strategy Collective

That’s why I created The Strategy Collective. This 12+ week program is designed to enhance your strategic thinking and decision-making skills, making strategy a core part of your practice. Find out more and join us. If you identified with the examples discussed, The Strategy Collective is the perfect place for you.