Strategy is defined as "A plan of action or policy to achieve a major or overall aim". To define a strategy, making it operational would require lot of introspection, discussions and In our experience as professionals many of us would have participated in the exercise of annual strategic plans and also crafting out strategic solutions in different business proposals that we would have worked.
But is this exercise taken seriously and does the individual or group apply themselves on it? In majority of cases, it seems to be a "No". Some common situation in strategising which all of us would have observed.
" our strategy should be a powerful differentiator that is articulated well enough to capture the customer mindshare and positions ourselves as a partner rather than a vendor"
" why are we in this space? Let us make competition irrelevant. Apply the Blue ocean strategy"
"Solution articulation makes our strategy very powerful"
In this whole scheme of playing with words what gets lost is the "how" part. The strategy is filled with what all things we envision to do, but it fails to address, how we will do it.
Why does this happen? Invariably in many situations, people end up in situations where they prepare their annual strategies overnight. They end up with filling up their presentations or templates with whatever they dreamt the previous night.
I don't mean to be satirical. But dreams are good for a long term vision where the horizon we look for seeing results is a couple of years at least. But in a annual strategy kind of a situation, where tangible results bound by numbers are the order of the day, strategic planning should be a continuous exercise. In addition any strategic initiative proposed, should be backed by a thorough approach for implementation that should have been thought about.
On introspection does making adjectives a taboo in strategic planning make it a relatively more successful exercise? Probably yes, since it would help us atleast the contributors while identifying the "gassers".
