Strategy is an integrative set of choices that positions you on a playing field of your choice in a way that you can play to win.

Strategy is a theory. It answers the question of why you should be on the playing field in the first place. I.e., we’re going to be better than anybody else at serving the customers on that playing field. For that to happen your theory has to be coherent.

It has to be doable; you have to be able to translate that into actions for it to be a great strategy. Planning does not have any such internal coherence. Planning can be a comfortable approach. Strategy takes more thought and processing and can be at times uncomfortable. It is a “Means (Theory) to an End (Outcome).” Strategy can appear at times to be disruptive, but in reality, it is the critical thinking process of playing to win…and winning becomes the outcome. Typically, planning is nothing more than building new buildings, launching a new brand, hiring more people. Planning is a checklist of activities that can be completed by you and your team.

While satisfying and comforting – planning is not strategic, because you can control the activities (planning). Strategy on the other hand is specific to an outcome, a competitive outcome that you wish to achieve, which involves customers wanting your product and/or service enough that they will buy enough of it to make the profitability that you’d like to make. The tricky thing about strategy is you don’t control the buyer. You might wish you did, but you can’t. The buyer decides not you. So that means putting yourself out there and saying, here’s what we believe will happen. We can’t prove the strategy in advance, we can’t guarantee it, but this is what we want to have happen (outcome), and, that we believe will happen if we play to win.  You don’t control strategy. I’ll say it again, strategy is not planning. If you’re still planning, odds are that there is at least one competitor out there figuring out how to win by developing a strategy to win that you’ve not taken the time figure out.

If you’re trying to escape the planning trap and that which is comfortable, how doyou start? Realize this, that creating Strategic Outcomes will have angst associated with the process.  It will make you feel nervous and uncomfortable, because you can’t guarantee that your theory and/or strategy will work. In strategy, you have to say…if our theory is right about what we can do and how the market will react, this will position us in and excellent way in our marketplace. You have to accept ahead of time that you can’t, and won’t, be perfect, and that is not poor leadership, right? Being a great leader means giving your organization the chance to do something great – playing to win!

Additionally, by setting strategic outcomes, that allows something that planning doesn’t. The ability to tweak and adjust the strategy as you go – it’s a journey. You must build annually, sometimes bi-annually, into the process, a mechanism for tweaking/adjusting it – refining the strategy. Developing Strategic Outcomes is a fluid process that is a “living” process/opportunity to develop and manage aspirations that will help your organization – play to win.