Strategy, Strategic and Goals

You often hear people talk about strategy and being strategic in interchangeable ways. The reality is, these are not the same; added to this, people often mistake strategy or strategic thinking for goals.

Many leaders create a lot of confusion for their teams by not being able to apply these concepts properly.

Here's how I look at it and how best I have found to communicate it.

Goals: The end state, where would we like to be, what do we want to achieve

Strategic: What direction should we be moving to in to create or further leverage an advantage

Strategy: Specific actions and initiatives that will make real or enhance your advantage

As you can see, strategy is actually about what your team is going to do.

Being able to focus your team this way is essential to avoid the trap of having everyone working extremely hard yet never fully accomplishing the goal. All too often, leaders explain the goals and the strategic thinking of the initiative and assume that their teams will know exactly what to do in order to achieve the mandate.

Remeber, everyone is unique and will exercise subjectivity. My paradigms are not the same as yours, and the way I look at something will never be exactly how anyone else sees it.

You will be far more effective working with your team to achieve the overall goals, if together you develop specific and measureable actions that each person will be responsible for.

Every action or decision should be challenged by asking if it brings you closer to achieving the goal. It is easy for teams to start working tangentially, by planning out your actions you will be able to focus the team's effort (no matter how small an individual action) towards the target.

Leverage the power of stacking aggregate gains.

Comments

The Irony Of A World That Needs Big Leaps

While Promoting Nothing but Fear The dream of previous generations was to find a good job, settle in, work hard, get promoted and retire. People were happy to be in one place, and for many of them, one place provided them everything they needed. The world has change. Business has changed. People have changed. I recently read the book Jump by Kim Perell. It's not exactly a business book, definitely geared towards taking big leaps - more framed for life in general. The core ideas are great. Nothing dramatically different than a lot of what you will find in other books in the self-help genre, however the presentation is on point and well structured. Kim sets up the three main buckets for why people need to take big leaps (or jumps) in their life. You have no choice (i.e. something has happened to you) You see an opportunity You're feeling stuck The book did connect for me on a personal level, however I found a lot of parallels for my professional life as well. I've spent the ...

The Delicate Dichotomy of “The Right Choice”

The Best Decision Isn’t Always as Obvious as It Seems Your success at work is correlated to the quality of your relationships. Easy right? It’s common sense. You might even be wondering who doesn’t already know this. The challenge isn’t about attitude though. You’re right, nobody likes the as%ho^e — Don’t be that person. The challenge comes when you have to choose between being right or making the right choice. The Problem My team and I had been working on a large project that had been pushed back multiple times over the years. The market finally got to a point where the problem in the field had to be addressed. We dusted off our files and started looking at the information we had built 3 years prior. We made our plans for what needed to be refreshed and how we would go about it. We cut through the project quickly. The team had matured a lot in that time and those roadblocks from the past were mere pebbles on the road this time around. Cue the problem. The fundamental assumptions...

Personal Lessons in Leadership: Authenticity

Is It Really Always Best to “Be Yourself”? You’ve been in this room before. Maybe hundreds of times. It’s used whenever a presentation is being made. It’s a simple room. Exactly what you would expect of a basic conference room. A long rectangular shape with walls painted a neutral colour. The decor is is nothing special. Awards, posters and memorabilia from the organization’s history. It’s supposed to make you feel like your part of the team. And it does. Until you don’t agree with what’s being said. Now you feel like a a big red dot on a bright white canvas. Just be yourself is some of the most popular advice people will give you these days. Everyone is encouraging you to be authentic and bring you whole self to work. Depending on who you are speaking with or what you happen to be reading, there is more that can be added in. They’ll tell you that being authentic doesn’t mean that you always have to be exactly the same. That there is a time and a place for different versions of yo...

Search This Blog