How to Build Strategies that Deliver Sustainable Success

Companies should aspire to be two things:

1. Relevant

2. Sustainable

But so many organizations fall short.

After years of serving as a CEO and now as an advisor to CEOs and leadership teams, one thing has become clear:

The most innovative companies with sustainable, intentional success are built off well-executed organizational strategies.

Simple, right?

Well, what’s simple in theory isn’t always simple in practice.

Too many leaders confuse plans for strategies and too many organizations abandon great strategies for short-term activities and results.

A well-defined, documented, and distributed organizational strategy may be the thing that leads your team to the next level of sustained success.

In today’s email:

• What is an effective strategy?

• What's the impact of an effective strategy?

• How are effective strategies different from plans?

• What steps can you take to start building and implementing effective strategies?

What is an effective strategy?

A strategy is a framework. It’s a roadmap - where are we going, how are we getting there, and why?

Effective strategies describe a future state and establish a guidepost that an organization's plans and actions will align to.

Don't confuse this with defining how big or profitable you want your organization to be. Strategies aren’t about numbers.

“We want to be a $100 million dollar firm by 2025” isn’t a strategy.

Instead, strategies define what we want to represent and how we make a difference for our stakeholders.

A well-defined strategy for an organization often includes:

Vision: A future state that describes how your organization aspires to be seen

Mission: How you will achieve your vision and the value you bring to clients

Strategies: What frameworks will you use to execute your mission and vision?

For example, I recently went through the exercise of building an organizational strategy for my advisory and coaching business.

For context, I advise and coach organizations and their leadership teams to reimagine the future and create environments where adaption and innovation thrive.

Here’s what I came up with for my organizational strategy:

Vision: Become widely recognized as a progressive leader who embraces the art of the possible.

Mission: Enable CEOs and leadership teams to BREAK THE MOLD™ of long-time operating principles and conventions.

Strategies: I’ll achieve my vision and mission through -

• Immersive coaching and advising with CEOs and leadership teams.

• Coaching in public: Sharing my perspectives and experiences online to a wide audience.

• Altering the future by encouraging young leaders to think differently.

Notice how none of these things are about numbers.

They aren’t about how many clients I’m going to have or how much revenue I plan to generate.

They give me a guidepost to align my actions to.

Now, I can go into each of these elements of my strategy and build plans and tactics that will help me get there.

What's the impact of an effective strategy?

Many CEOs believe the only important thing is to hit their numbers.

While financial results are critical, they are not an "OR" to being aligned with strategy.

In fact, if you focus too much on short-term financial results, you often sacrifice the long-term sustainable benefits of being aligned to strategy.

Financial results are an "AND" to being on strategy.

Execute an effective strategy and financial results will follow.

Think of it this way:

Well-executed plans (may) deliver immediate results.

Well-executed strategies likely deliver sustainable, intentional results.

Results, by definition, are things that happen.

They aren't inherently positive or negative.

A well-designed, documented, and distributed strategy provides a lens through which your entire organization can view results.

Viewing those results through the lens of a strategy allows your entire team to interpret a common meaning from the results you achieve.

That common meaning creates alignment.

Aligned organizations are the ones that BREAK THE MOLD™ and create long-term sustainable success.

How are effective strategies different from plans?

I see too many leaders mistake plans for strategy.

And it’s costing them the next level of sustained growth, innovation, and success.

A plan includes:

• Tactics

• Actions

• Short-term activities

• A present-forward mindset

A strategy includes:

• Visions

• Destinations

• Long-term focus

• A future-back mindset

In order to activate strategy, you build plans.

(And don't let the term 'strategic plan' fool you—it's still just a plan)

Plans describe the tactics and actions you’ll take to achieve your strategy.

As I like to say (and have pictured below), "All roads lead to and from strategy."

Conclusion:

People often think focusing on strategy means sacrificing immediate results and that hasn’t been my experience.

When we effectively design and stick with an effective strategy, performance is often accelerated.

I’ve experienced this with large, medium, and small companies.

When effective strategy is executed well, sustained, intentional results result.

If you're reading this email, take the time to evaluate your organization (or your business unit or department) and ask yourself:

"Does my organization have a well-designed, documented, and distributed strategy that our actions are aligned to?"

Do we have:
- A vision
- A mission
- Strategies for how we achieve our vision and mission

If the answer is no, it's unlikely you're headed toward being the most sustainable and relevant organization you're capable of being.

With intention,
Alan D Whitman