Start with an S

Strategy and its Role in Success

Strategy is the first pillar of the SEQUENCE model. It lies at the heart of any process that takes an idea from its conception to fulfilment. Be it expanding the business’s portfolio with a new product, designing the product itself, or reacting to the changing market landscape, strategy plays a central role in the organisation’s progress from an aspiration to a tangible value, and provides foundation which all the remaining elements of SEQUENCE build upon.

Outside the business world (we remember that SEQUENCE equally applies to all kinds of creative effort, not just commercial activities), strategy is just as important. You may never have thought of this, but important life events, such as getting married, buying a house, or arranging retirement for an elderly relative can be approached with the same strategic mindset as expanding your business to a new market or country.

So, what exactly is strategy? Despite the importance of its role, coming up with a uniform answer is surprisingly challenging. There are over 90 definitions of strategy – by academics, business leaders, philosophers, and other great minds that you undoubtedly can trust – which makes it one of the most debated concepts that ever existed.

In fact, it couldn’t be any other way. At the highest level, strategy is the way that each of us chooses to lead our conscious life. As such, the understanding of strategy is profoundly subjective, and is inextricably linked to the meaning that each person assigns to their life. This meaning reflects their cultural and social background, the viewpoints, values and goals they believe in, and the means of fulfilling them that they deem logically and ethically acceptable. Just as philosophers for many centuries have debated on the meaning of human life, pragmatic great minds have debated on the definition of strategy.

Here are just a few definitions from across the world’s most trusted sources:

A detailed plan for achieving success in situations such as war, politics, business, industry, or sport, or the skill of planning for such situations (Cambridge Dictionary).

A way of doing something or dealing with something (Cambridge Dictionary).

A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim (Oxford Dictionary).

Creating a unique and valuable position through a distinct set of activities […] (Michael Porter; adapted).

One of the definitions that we appreciate the most is the following one from Merriam-Webster dictionary. We like it because it stresses the long-term nature of the goal and alludes to a different pillar of SEQUENCE, naturalism:

An adaptation or complex of adaptations (as of behaviour, metabolism, or structure) that serves or appear to serve an important function in achieving evolutionary success.

Let’s try and see what all these definitions have in common.

So, first of all, strategy is a plan. Without a plan, strategy reduces to a mere wish, which is unlikely to be ever fulfilled. Strategy often starts with a wish, aspiration, threat, or discomfort, – but what makes it a strategy is a solid, actionable plan.

Next, the purpose of strategy is to reach a big goal – something referred to as “major or overall aim”, “valuable position”, and “success” (even “evolutionary success”).

Some definitions accentuate the challenging nature of the goal by providing the context of war, politics, or sports, all of which assume fierce, cut-throat competition with others. While having a good strategy within a context of competition for a scarce resource is particularly important, there is no reason not to have it in any other situation. The greatest battle of all assumes no third parties after all.

Finally, strategy assumes long-term change to the status quo. Reaching the big goal introduces a qualitative change in the capabilities of the strategist or the environment they operate in. The new position becomes the new normal, and the past remains no longer relevant.

Putting everything together,

Strategy is a high-level plan of introducing qualitative, big-impact, sustainable change to the status quo.

What distinguishes a good strategy from a bad one? Good strategists pay particular attention to the following three points.

They establish clear, unambiguous, tangible, and measurable goals.

Many business leaders, when asked about their strategy, say something like this:

To become number one in their field.
To put their customers first / provide them with the best service.
To increase sales by 20% in the next year.

None of these is a good goal. What exactly is number one? The biggest turnover? The highest RoI? The most customers? Does 0.5% advantage on each metric indicate that the goal was reached? 5%? 15%?

Every company puts their customers first and strives to provide the best service, that’s a pre-requisite for any business that respects itself, and certainly not a reachable and measurable goal. Increasing sales in the moment is easy – take a loan, use it to buy a pile of stock, and put that up on sale for half the price – you’ll surely sell all your stock in no time. Oh, you meant something else? Well, that’s not clear from what you said.

There are a couple of simple tests that you can use to verify that your goal is good enough to be called strategic. First, it should be easily explainable in simple terms. If you need to resort to highly specialised jargon or require the listener to possess a college degree to digest it, it is probably not good enough, and reaching it would be complicated by its lack of clarity.

Second, the people that are going to accompany and support you on your way to the goal – your employees, co-workers, fellow club members, or family – should have no difficulties with associating the work they are contributing with that goal. They should be able to see that every action they take, be it working on the line, running payroll, or sending sales emails, contributes to the goal.

Finally, the goal should be measurable and, consequently, verifiable. At any given moment you should be able to tell how far you are from the goal and what efforts you need to take to get closer.

There are two further “bonus” characteristics that are quite common to smart companies. Fourth (let’s keep the numbering), their goals are sustainable. They are balanced, they are firm, and, once reached, they are here to stay without any special additional effort. By the time they have reached their goal they have transformed themselves, so the goal has become part of who they are.

Fifth, smart companies aim to set goals that put their value first – not their financial indicators. They know that financial indicators are always derivative of the value they create. Focusing on value makes the goal more tangible, more sustainable, and, most importantly, way more relatable for people working on it.

The two bonus points are stories in their own right, and we will cover them separately later. What we want to emphasize at this point is that a good goal equally serves as a beacon, driver, and criteria for the success of the strategy.

They come up with a plan that sums up changes, not actions.

The best goal doesn’t go far from ambition without a working “how we are going to get there” plan. Repeating the goal numerous times, on your office stationery, in corporate meetings, or on a 6’x10’ banner in front of your office won’t make it come around by itself. Each of those stimuli may make you and some of your employees enthusiastic in short term, and may even briefly increase your output (and by this give you false hope), but without a clear, realistic “how” your goal will remain a statement of intentions at best.

To get to your goal, you need a strategic plan that would answer that “how”. Just as the goal itself, the plan needs to be no-nonsense, clear and measurable. It should aim to focus on changes that need to be made rather than actions that need to be taken. Remember: strategy is about long-term changes – of where you are and where you want to be, of your inputs and outputs, of your position relative to the others and the entire environment. Focusing on those changes, and not specific actions, helps you think, as financiers say, in “capital” terms (versus “current” terms normally assumed by actions). Actions that you can take to fulfil those capital changes will come too, but on a later stage.

The plan should not get in too much detail: it should be a brief high-level roadmap that highlights the core steps or changes that the company needs to make to reach the set goal. The three tests suggested above for evaluating the quality of the goal stand here too: to be actionable, the plan must be simple, relatable, and measurable.

For example, a plan for the goal “reach 20% increase in the number of product units sold by the end of the year in a sustainable way” may look like this:

Raise awareness of the product by 10% in company’s historic markets (a change: 10% more people know about the product).
Establish sustainable way to appeal to users in new markets X, Y, Z to increase the overall size of the target audience by another 10% (a change: increase of the target audience size by 10%).
Expand production line and negotiate with suppliers to cover the increase in output (a change: a bigger line, new terms with suppliers).
Secure finance to cover the expansion (a change: access to extra credit or investment).

While none of the points gets into much detail, they still define what needs to be done (changed) in a clear and unambiguous way. They are equally easy to understand both for the CEO, who will be deciding on the best way of appealing to the new markets, and to every employee who will be implementing the changes on the ground.

Don’t think much about how exactly you will be implementing the changes at this point. Focus on what the new status quo needs to look like to back your goal. Once you have a clear picture of the desired new reality in your mind, it would be much easier to come up with appropriate actions that will take you there.

They execute visibly, meticulously and uncompromisingly.

Having a good goal and a good plan to back it makes for two thirds of a successful strategy. And yet the last third, acting upon the plan, can make all the difference.

It is vitally important to hold your strategic goal and plan above everything. In a way, they are the constitution of your product or company. Not enforcing the constitution plunges the country into chaos. Disrespect or negligence to the constitution by those in power undermines its holiness in the eyes of the people, who start disobeying it too. Bending the constitution or treating it declaratively leads to emergence of the parallel “shadow law” that steers the country in its own direction – which rarely aligns with one assumed by the constitution. That’s why every action you take must align with the goal and plan that you set.

Just as important as acting upon the chosen strategy is acting visibly. Every action that you take should be clearly traceable to the goal and plan. Acting visibly brings in numerous practical benefits:

You reinforce the chosen strategy by being the first to commit to it. It will be easy for others to follow.
You create and shape a live rule book that records precedents and accumulates knowledge that can guide your team through future challenges.
It brings in and reiterates meaning behind everyone’s effort. Few things give a stronger blow to performance than lack of meaning.
Every action taken on the path to the goal reinforces the goal and makes it real and feasible. Everyone involved feels the real effect their actions have on the common goal.

Good strategists don’t hesitate to make changes to the plan if they realise that it is not working for them as they expected it to. Creating an ideal plan from scratch is not easy: the data we base it on is often incomplete and fuzzy. Circumstances change. New risks emerge and old ones go. Actions by other players affect the board. All of this may result in the plan at one point no longer being the best way of reaching the goal.

Having once accepted a direction, human beings are extremely reluctant to change it. This is known as Status Quo Bias. No one fancies changes. And yet, the sooner the discrepancy between the theory and practice is recognised and rectified, the quicker the company can escape the daydreaming and focus on the reality at hand. Every step in a wrong direction takes you two steps away from your goal: the wrong step itself, and the right step that is not taken.

While it is common to think of strategy as something related to the world of big guys – politicians, military, or the corporates – strategic thinking applies to every aspect of our lives. We often think strategically without having a clue that we do.

A family looking to expand. A student looking to build a career. A farmer looking to deal with climate change that has damaged his crops for yet another year. All these people are looking to change where they are, to become what they want to be – get from their point A to point B. They may not think of it in exact same terms, but they still need to develop a good strategy by setting their goal and creating a plan that would take them there.

Devising a strategy, formally or informally, is the crucial first step in making any big change to your status quo. The bigger the change you are looking to make, the more you need a well-defined strategy that would guide you there and support you along the way.That’s why Strategy is the first pillar of SEQUENCE. It is the stem that holds everything else together. All the other principles build around, reinforce, and support it, but it’s the stem that defines the ultimate purpose of your presence in the room and the direction you need to take to fulfil that purpose.