Often I hear business managers solely talk about the “WHAT”-part of their envisioned strategy, the easy part. “Team we have a new strategy! We want to set up a base-camp on the moon.” “Great strategy, boss!” This often reminds me of the graphic where two little man are before a whiteboard with a flowchart pointing at” “and then a miracle happens”. How to realize the strategic goals though is the hard part. And it gets even harder if conditions are set and resources are limited.
Strategy in my view is the proverbial 5% inspiration and 95% transpiration. The “HOW” does not follow after the “WHAT” but they are two sides of the same coin. They need to be iterated as the means available will set limitations (and opportunities!) to what can be achieved and vice verse what the company wants to achieve sets prerequisites for the means that have to be mobilized.
Various definitions of strategy are in use: Minzberg describes strategy as “a pattern in a stream of decisions”, others view strategy mainly as planning. Chandler’s definition is pretty typical:
“… the determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise
[RPD: “WHAT”], and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals [RPD: a limited part of “HOW”]”.Identifying a (perceived) customer need is only a very first step in creating an achievable strategy. A strategy is only worth more then the (virtual) paper it is written on if it can explain HOW the goals can be achieved. All company creativity and knowledge should be mobilized to think up of the “miracle” of how to achieve the strategic goals. This is where true company value added and future revenue streams are created.
Strategy is all about “HOW” and hardly at all about “WHAT”
In earlier posts I stipulated this about strategy: