"Strategy is not for us"

It is no wonder so many organisations keep Strategy at the door. At best it looks like an indulgent exercise; at worst, a waste of good working time. And the evidence seems to back them up — the business grew last year, the team knows its market, the technical know-how is second to none. So why stop to do Strategy at all?

There are a number of beliefs that keep it outside. Let's name two. The first is the belief that Strategy serves no real purpose in the organisation's mission to grow — growth feels like something you do, not something you sit down and plan. The second is subtler: standing back to take an honest, stock-take of how the organisation has been performing is hard, and most leaders are too deep in the doing to make time for it.

Strategy is, at its heart, thinking — and thinking is not navel-gazing. It is the work of drawing threads of evidence together, from outside the organisation and within it, to figure out how you will win in your market. It needs a little time. Not much, but some. And because nothing today stands still, Strategy is no longer a one-off event; it is an exercise in agility, returned to again and again.

So you carve out a few weeks. You pull together the right, representative team. You weigh the evidence — and then you choose. Choose? Yes. You decide which few strategic moves are genuinely in, and you back them: you invest, you prioritise, you even reshape the organisation to make them easier to deliver. And, just as importantly, you stop and you downgrade the things creating no value at all.

This is about as important as the work gets. Once the choices are made, you commit: you stay in lane, you prioritise, you measure what matters most.

Every organisation's mission involves growth — whether you are a Fortune 500 or a seed-funded start-up. And growth needs a map and a compass: a Strategy, and a laser-focused, measured way to deliver it.