Andrea Belk Olson Don’t conflate strategy tools with a strategy
The statistician George Box famously observed, “All models are wrong; some models are useful.”
No strategy model is perfect. They are just possibly a helpful tool for a job that requires a lot of ingenuity, originality, and resourcefulness. I mean, AutoCAD is a great software tool for creating blueprints, but it doesn’t help you come up with a unique idea for a home design.
Because strategy is about charting a particularly distinct path to success, thinking counterintuitively in an environment of complexity, and leveraging your advantages with ways to amplify those advantages, it’s hard to put that into a structured formula. This is why highly successful strategic thinkers don’t use methodologies. They don’t do what everyone else is doing.
Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple, didn’t do what everyone else was doing. In 2010, he outlined Apple’s corporate strategy in an email[1] (yes, an email) to his top 100 employees with six bullet points:
- Who are we?
- What do we do?
- Post PC era
- 2011: Holy War with Google
- 2011: Year of the Cloud
- 2015: New Campus
Wait, where’s the SWOT analysis? Where’s the reams of customer research? Where’s the mission statement? Where’s the big, hairy, audacious goals? Where’s the inspirational logo and tagline?
Jobs didn’t have any of that.
Does this make you think that “six bullet points” should now be the new best practice in strategy design? It shouldn’t. It’s not the structure that makes a great strategy. It’s how we approach thinking about strategy.
Jobs designed his strategy around three things: understanding the organization’s strengths (1,2), defining the competitive differentiation (3,4), and plotting the direction for the future (5,6). That’s it.
He didn’t talk about traditional things like increasing iPhone or MacBook sales. Or market segments. Or revenue goals. He did talk about a strategy to shift the organization’s focus from selling individual products to creating a comprehensive ecosystem.
That’s the difference between a real strategy and a strategy in name alone.
About the Author
Trained as a behavioral scientist and customer-centricity expert, Andrea Belk Olson helps executives implement the art and science of operationalizing corporate strategy through understanding organizational mindsets. She is the author of three business books, including her most recent, What To Ask: How To Learn What Customers Need but Don’t Tell You.
She is a 4x ADDY award winner and contributing writer to Entrepreneur Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Rotman Magazine, World Economic Forum, and more. Andrea is also an entrepreneurial adjunct instructor at the University of Iowa and TEDx speaker coach.
More information is also available on www.pragmadik.com and www.andreabelkolson.com.
