How do you recognize a bullsh*t strategy?

One, they are expressed as goals, without saying anything about how to reach those goals.

Two, they are generic and shared by pretty much all the other brands and companies in your category.

Three, they are fluffy and written in such a loose and broad way that there are no obvious actions falling out of it. What does "leverage synergies" mean? What do you do with that?

A strategy is the unique value a business provides to the market.

A unique value is the benefit your customers get from your product, which they can't get anywhere else, and which a hell of a lot of people want or need.

The intellectual content of a strategy - the thinking behind it - is only half the battle. The other half is converting that thinking into a strategy that is actually usable.

So what can you do?

You can put your strategy through the subjectivity test where you remove all subjective language, anything like 'good', 'great', 'world-class', 'best' and 'smart', and see if there are any substance left.

You could also play the opposite game where you ask yourself if the opposite of your strategy also make logical sense. If the answer is yes, then you probably have a good strategy on your hands because it represents a true strategic choice.

PowerPoint or Word?

Most strategies float around in "The Deck". A nice long PowerPoint presentation with a few pillars, onions, missions, visions, and the like. A PowerPoint lets you get away with all the things that wouldn't fly in a conversation or email.

Instead, just write it the way you'd tell it. 

A single page of A4 with a few paragraphs of argument and explanation, culminating in the punchline ("therefore we are going to do X"). Your job is simply to explain it so that anyone who reads it, gets it.

There should be no difference between your written explanation and your spoken one.

Even a super-crisp strategy is still, ultimately, going to be fairly abstract, so it's important you really land the idea (and get the ball rolling) by listing some key actions arising from it.
  • What must you do to deliver on this?
  • What needs to change?
  • What do you need to stop doing?
  • What needs to be added?

If a strategy doesn't prompt ideas automatically then it has a problem - probably one of being too abstract, and not practically grounded enough.

"No Bullsh*t strategy" by Alex M H Smith

Strategy, strategy and strategy

... or shall we call it an action agenda? 

I loved the conversation between Professor Richard Rumelt and Lenny Rachitsky at Lenny's Newsletter.

Goals, ambitions, visions, missions, values, wished-for end states - none of these things are a strategy.

And it's not true that these things have to be in place before you can have a strategy. Strategies are fundamentally about what you’ll do in response to a challenge. Strategy is problem solving, and you cannot solve a problem you don't understand. 

As understanding deepens, the strategist seeks the crux - the one challenge that both is critical and appears to be solvable.

What makes up a good strategy?

A diagnosis of the situation. Figure out what's going on here and understand the challenge you face. The challenge can be to deal with change and competition, it can be triggered by a large opportunity or it can be internal like outdated routines, bureaucracy, or lack of collaboration.

A guiding policy, i.e. what will you do and what will you not do with the challenge. It is "guiding" because it channels actions in certain directions without defining exactly what shall be done.

A set of coherent actions that will carry out the guiding policy. This part is so easy to leave out because people like to think of strategy as a high level conceptual thing. Strategy is about action. There must be enough clarity about action to bring concepts down to earth.

When deciding what you will do with the challenge, find your source of advantage. Do you know something that others don't? Do you have a skill that others don't have? Do you have a reputation, brand or existing market system that others cannot replicate? Do you have scale, technology, experience or other resources that others don't have?

A bad strategy is fluff and fails to face the challenge, it lacks the diagnosis. If you don't frame the challenge it is difficult to assess the quality of the strategy.

Another mistake is to treat goals as a strategy. Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles. Good strategic objectives are the outcome of a strategy, not its input.

Bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy. One common reason for choosing avoidance is the pain or difficulty of choice.

Good strategy requires leaders who are willing to and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests.

Strategy is not mysterious. It is about solving the most important problem you are facing. You need to be focused on something doable and be consistent about it.