Strategy is about truth

Identifying and targeting the truth at the heart of a organisation is a part of strategic planning so many people overlook. Concentrating on the structural side of strategic planning, operations, processes etc. most likely is more appealing to the majority of business leaders because they like what they know. Don't we all?

The truth is that successful strategies generally (and it is a generalisation) work because people get engaged with them and that is usually because the author of the plan is engaged with it in the truest sense. What do we mean by this? Well, people can be difficult to convince when changes are suggested, especially in their ways of work. And even more so when their behaviours and culture is threatened with change. So here is the crux; the more a new strategy challenges the culture, values and beliefs of a business, the more value it can potentially add, but also the more resistance it will probably meet. Hence the need for true conviction from the one trying to implement it. 

There is of course more to this than simply liking your own ideas enough to convince others they are good. Good ideas (even yours) must be tested rigorously before they should be written into a full strategy.

The most important thing of all though is to achieve alignment between the culture, values and behaviours in a business and the structural and operational side of it and to consider this as fundamental to a successful strategy for change. Being a leader is about managing the territory between the two side of this equation; softer side things like cultures and more rigorous side things like ways of working and structures.

"the first principle is not to fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool"  - Richard Feynman

tim.meehan@horizonscitech.co.uk