Most strategy documents describe where an organisation already is, dressed up in language about where it is going. This is not a cynical observation. It is a structural problem that arises from the way most strategy processes are designed. The people who commission the strategy are also the people whose decisions the strategy will evaluate. The incentive to confirm existing direction is strong.
Confusing Options With a Decision ¶
A strategy process that produces three equally weighted options has not produced a strategy. It has produced a menu. The purpose of a strategy process is to evaluate options against the organisation's actual constraints and make a decision. If the process ends with options rather than a decision, the most likely explanation is that the leadership team was not ready to make the decision, or that the process was not designed to force one. Both are worth examining.
Building the Evidence Base After the Conclusion ¶
In many strategy processes, the conclusion is reached early, often in the first workshop, and the subsequent work is spent building an evidence base that supports it. This is not analysis. It is rationalisation. The evidence base should precede the conclusion, and the conclusion should be capable of being changed by the evidence. If the evidence base is being assembled after the direction has been set, the strategy process is providing cover rather than insight.
Ignoring the Constraints That Will Not Change ¶
Every organisation operates within constraints that are not going to change in the strategy period: regulatory requirements, ownership structure, existing contractual commitments, the capabilities of the current team. A strategy that does not account for these constraints is a strategy that will not be implemented. The most useful early step in any strategy process is to map the constraints explicitly, before any options are generated, so that the options are evaluated against reality rather than against an idealised version of the organisation.
A strategy process that is designed to confirm existing direction is not a strategy process. It is an expensive way of producing a document that describes where you already are.