The Importance of Strategy for Business Growth
Every sports team knows the goal is to win. But when you face a new team, the weather is dreadful and you’re not on the scoreboard, the strategy changes. You can’t win without a strategy.
How many of these situations ring true for you?
If you’ve felt the sting from any of these situations you might be doing what so many of us have learned to do well.
We’ve been cultured to value results over strategy and rush to implementation.
In many organizations, he who gets the most done gets rewarded. But the glory of getting it done can create a lot of grief.
Who needs that? So, let’s talk about strategy.
Let’s Talk About Strategy
I see you rolling your eyes and wanting to run screaming from the room. Stick with me – there’s more to strategy than what you immediately might think.
Strategy gets a bad rap. Many think it’s boring work that slows you down and collects dust on a back shelf.
Yep, it may not always be the most exciting thing to do, but without clarity around your strategy, you run the risk of a work life filled with false starts, dead ends and misery.
Who wants that?
Here’s how I define strategy:
strat·e·gy
/ˈstradəjē/
noun
It’s the course of action a business takes to achieve its goals and objectives over time. It serves to set direction, create alignment, build commitment in the organization, and acts as a touchstone for decision-making.
As the image below shows, strategy can’t be developed in a vacuum – it operates within a context.
Having a written strategy is a game changer. While many question why go through the bother, there’s a lot of good that comes from it.
So, what’s wrong with writing it down? What’s wrong with sharing it with others? What’s wrong with bringing it out to remind you of the big picture when you’re taking on new challenges?
A good strategy takes the guesswork out of what you’re doing. It helps you build momentum and stay on track so you can move more effectively and faster towards your goals.
But what do you do if your organization’s strategy appears to be missing in action?
Developing the habit of doing one small thing, that takes only a few minutes to do, before you rush to implementation will save you a whole lot of grief.
That habit? Pulling yourself and everyone back to say:
Every sports team knows the goal is to win. But when you face a new team, the weather is dreadful and you’re not on the scoreboard, the strategy changes. You can’t win without a strategy.
Looking at Strategy Another Way
Starting to warm up to the importance of strategy?
Good. So, what if you looked at strategy another way and thought of it as a complex challenge to solve?
In our work we use a research-based scientific assessment called the FourSight Thinking Profile to help individuals and teams understand how they prefer to solve complex problems. Once they know how they approach complex problems we share a toolkit and problem solving framework that makes it easier to tackle them.
FourSight’s researchers found:
- You need four different types of thinking to solve a complex challenge
- You probably prefer some types of thinking over others
- You’ll experience a drop in energy when you work outside your thinking preferences
- You like to work with people who share your thinking preferences
Left to your own devices:
- Your solutions may come up short – we tend to skip over the thinking steps we don’t prefer.
- You probably avoid the people who could help you the most (the people who don’t think like you do)
“You’ll naturally gravitate to work that aligns with your thinking preferences and skip work that doesn’t.”
So, what does this mean for leaders tasked with strategy development?
Well, FourSight’s researchers found something really surprising about leaders.
“Leaders are almost twice as likely to prefer to implement than any other preference.”
With 58% of leaders focusing on execution (Good Team, Bad Team – Thurber & Miller (2024) P45-46), strategic planning often gets overlooked, leaving the business without clear direction to support growth goals.
A well-defined strategy is crucial for guiding implementation and achieving sustainable growth.
Strategy starts with clarifying – who, what, where, when, why, how, and what if. And a few other things, like the ideal outcome and what’s worked and not worked before.
Only about 20% of leaders prefer to clarify. But the people on their teams happen to like clarifying. They also like generating and developing the ideas on how to achieve the strategy.
Which is why I’ve found the best strategies are developed by leaders with a good cross-section of people from within their organization. Complex problems, like strategy, benefit from more eyes and more brains who can bring more energy and better thinking to create a better result. And the bonus is, it’s a lot easier to get everyone aligned and behind something when they’ve had a hand in its creation.
[Download our case study about a Corporate Security Leadership Team who took an innovative approach to engage their people in strategy development.]
The Hidden Cost of Putting Implementation Before Strategy
Bet you’ve said or heard at least one of these statements at work. They hint at the challenges of valuing implementation and taking action over strategy. And while the costs of this approach may not initially be apparent, they are real and include:
1Wasted Efforts and Resources
Prioritizing implementation over strategy often results in failed efforts to produce tangible value for the organization.
2Missed Opportunities
By rushing to implement something without first understanding the underlying issues, it’s likely you’ll miss out on opportunities to drive true innovation and business value.
3Demoralized Teams
Teams who don’t feel they have clear direction often feel demoralized, undervalued and frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of progress. Implementing solutions without a strategic foundation can lead to disengagement and a sense of futility among employees.
4Misalignment with Organizational Priorities
When work isn’t aligned with the broader business goals, teams run the risk of doing ‘busy’ work that isn’t needed or valued.
5MIssed Diagnostic Insights
6Lack of Sustainable Change
Without addressing the root causes and aligning their efforts with the organization’s strategy, any gains from a rushed solution will likely be short-lived.
7Poor Decision-Making
How can you make a good decision when you don’t know the guideposts under which you’re operating or what success looks like? How do you award budget or create value in the organization if you don’t know what is valued?
In a work environment where time is precious and resources are never unlimited, taking the time to clarify and align to strategy is critical to business growth and viability.
Getting the wrong things done quickly only works for so long. Taking the time to create a solid strategy and engaging your people in the process saves time, effort and avoids hidden costs. And before you know it, you’ll be achieving more than you ever thought possible.
Need Help With Your Strategy?
Book a FREE 30 minute discovery call and let’s talk. We’ll listen to where you are, what you’d to see, and together we’ll sort out your next best steps to getting there.
About TouchPoints Learning & Innovation
We are an enthusiastic team of experts in learning, change and innovation. We help organizations solve business problems through facilitated creative problem-solving, team development services, outcome-driven innovation, and custom training development and delivery.
