A strategy specifies an outcome you wish to achieve, like attracting customers to buy your product, enough of it to give you a profit.But you don't control the customers. They decide, not you and that's a harder trick to allure them.This is where you put yourself out and say what you belive will happen and wait for reality to kick in.

Strategy is a journey.

Planning is old.Strategy is new.Strategy and planning is not the same.People plan and do a lot of work but without a strategy they fail.

Most strategic planning has nothing to do with strategy.

What would have to be true about ourselves, about industry, about competition, about customers for this strategy to work?Why do you do that? It's because you can then watch the world unfold.

Plans are quite comforting, It's about the resources you are going to spend. It's on the cost side of businesses.Who controls your cost? You control the cost, You are the customer! It's comfortable because you control them.

Why do leaders so often focus on planning?

<ol><li>here's where we're choosing to play.</li><li>here's how we're choosing to win.</li><li>here the capabilities we need to have in place.</li><li>here are the management systems.</li></ol>And that's why it's going to achieve its goals, this aspiration that we have.Then you lay out the logic, what must be true for that all to work out the way we hope.Go do it, and watch and tweak as you go along.

An integrative set of choices that position you on a playing field of your choice in a way that you win.Strategy has a theory not a proof.A strategic theory must be coherent and doable.Planning has no coherence to it. Its a list of what departments want with no internal coherence and company goal as a collective.

So what is a strategy?

The tricky thing about planning is that while you're planning, chances are at least one competitor is figuring out how to win.

Startegy will have angst associated with it. It'll make you somewhat nervous.You can't prove in advance that your strategy will succeed.Accept the fact that you can't know for sure.Lay out the logic of your strategy clearly. Keep it short - ideally 1 page, do not complicate.

How do I avoid the "planning trap"? 

And if something you say is in the logic that would have to be true for it to work is not working out quite the way you hoped.Then tweak it, what you want is a mechanism of tweaking it, toning it, and refining it so it gets better and better as you go along.

I have been in the rut of planning after winning with strategy earlier, it takes real mental clarity, It's a wonderul resource. Thank you!

A comprehensive plan—with goals, initiatives, and budgets–is comforting. But starting with a plan is a terrible way to make strategy. Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and one of the world’s leading thinkers on strategy, says developing strategy means going outside an organization’s comfort zone and escaping the common traps of strategic planning. 00:00 Most strategic planning has nothing to do with strategy. 01:00 So what is a strategy? 02:08 Why do leaders so often focus on planning? 04:05 Let's see a real-world example of strategy beating planning. 06:33 How do I avoid the "planning trap"? For more from Roger Martin on this topic, read, "A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness": https://www.amazon.com/New-Way-Think-Management-Effectiveness-ebook/dp/B09KHKWB7B Follow Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-business-review/ https://www.facebook.com/HBR/ https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz https://www.instagram.com/harvard_business_review Sign up for Newsletters: https://hbr.org/email-newsletters #HarvardBusinessReview #Strategy #RogerMartin Copyright © 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. #StrategicPlanning #Planning #Business #Explainer #Success #HowTo

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A comprehensive plan—with goals, initiatives, and budgets–is comforting. But starting with a plan is a terrible way to make strategy. Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and one of the world’s leading thinkers on strategy, says developing strategy means going outside an organization’s comfort zone and escaping the common traps of strategic planning.

00:00 Most strategic planning has nothing to do with strategy.
01:00 So what is a strategy?
02:08 Why do leaders so often focus on planning?
04:05 Let's see a real-world example of strategy beating planning.
06:33 How do I avoid the "planning trap"? 

For more from Roger Martin on this topic, read, "A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness": https://www.amazon.com/New-Way-Think-Management-Effectiveness-ebook/dp/B09KHKWB7B

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