How Simple is Your Strategy?

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and sim­plic­i­ty. Sim­ple can be hard­er than com­plex: You have to work hard to get your think­ing clean to make it sim­ple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move moun­tains.” — Steve Jobs

Over the years, I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed by strat­e­gy devel­op­ment and exe­cu­tion. I used to think it was com­pli­cat­ed – almost like a sci­en­tif­ic for­mu­la or algorithm.

But I’ve learned from over 20-plus years of work­ing with clients — and some of the best experts — that the best strate­gies are incred­i­bly sim­ple. In fact, if a strat­e­gy can’t be explained in 30 sec­onds, to some­one who knows noth­ing about your busi­ness, you have work to do.

Many peo­ple like to talk about strate­gic think­ing and get excit­ed about ideas, but mas­tery is in think­ing of sim­ple things that give you an advan­tage, appeal to your cus­tomers, and focus on what makes your busi­ness high­ly effec­tive and different.

In a recent dis­cus­sion with a very smart exec­u­tive, I was shown all these mod­els of what they’d been work­ing on, which they thought need­ed an hour to go through, with the team. I said that if they couldn’t cov­er it in 60 to 90 sec­onds, they weren’t ready, and I asked them to go back to the draw­ing board to boil it down – with my help, if needed.

The Right Model

Now the right mod­el can be help­ful in the strate­gic plan­ning process. Here are a few we use:

• The Hedge­hog and the Fly­wheel, devel­oped by Jim Collins, is a great way to see where to focus and how to build the momen­tum to an uncon­trol­lable, pos­i­tive force. He wrote a new, very pow­er­ful mono­gram on this recently
• The Fourth Option by Kai­han Krip­pen­dorf offers four strate­gic ideas that are often over­looked but deserve time and atten­tion to bring a strat­e­gy to life
• Blue Ocean Strat­e­gy gives you a visu­al strat­e­gy map in which you can clear­ly see how you unique­ly deliv­er val­ue to your cus­tomers and not get stuck being a commodity
• The Har­vard Busi­ness Review arti­cle Can You Say What Your Strat­e­gy Is? shows a Venn dia­gram that real­ly sum­ma­rizes strat­e­gy — and I call it the most impor­tant slide you need to do and see to under­stand strategy
• Final­ly, Michael Porter’s The Five Forces you a good mod­el to take an exter­nal view of your busi­ness and the chang­ing, com­pet­i­tive forces shap­ing your industry.

You may already have a per­fect strat­e­gy but if you can artic­u­late it through one of these sim­ple mod­els, it’ll force you to be sim­pler and more under­stand­able — and to stick to it.

And when it comes to exe­cu­tion, the One-Page Strate­gic Plan from the book Scal­ing Up (on which I was a key con­trib­u­tor) is a sim­ple and pow­er­ful frame­work to bring any strat­e­gy to life — and quick­ly under­stand who on your team is great at exe­cu­tion and who may not be.

After all, if you can’t exe­cute, there’s no point doing the strategy.

The Chal­lenge

• Can you artic­u­late your strat­e­gy in 30 to 60 to 90 seconds?
• Which of the mod­els above would help you to refine then artic­u­late your strategy?

If you want help to clar­i­fy or improve your strat­e­gy – or ensure its most effec­tive exe­cu­tion — from some­one on our well-versed team, let us know.