What Strategy Is and What It Isn’t

There isn’t a single company today that doesn’t develop a strategy in-house. This is essential for any business, mainly because it’s focused on growth and generating revenue. However, if a strategy expert were to analyze most of the strategic plans created by these companies, very few would actually qualify as a strategy. In this post, I’m going to explain what a strategy is—but more importantly, what a strategy isn’t, which you’ll find much more useful than the former. Shall we begin?

The strategy is one of the four decisions in Scaling Up (Talent, Strategy, Execution, and Money). But what is Scaling Up? This, It is an approach based on strategic thinking and quality, which means it is not advisable to implement a strategy unless quality control is in place for both the processes and the final product delivered to the customer. This means that growth will only occur if quality standards are guaranteed.

According to the concept of “scaling up”, there are several factors that must be taken into account when developing a sustainable growth strategy.

• The company’s financial capacity. A growth strategy requires having sufficient capital to fund the investments driven by that growth.

• Talent and leadership skills. The workforce must consist of trained and well-led employees capable of handling the growth resulting from the proposed strategy.
• Added value. A strategy that leads to growth should only be considered if it adds value to the market.

Before we sit down to think about a strategy, we need to keep in mind the concepts I just mentioned. Once we have all that under control, let’s see What is strategy?.

What is strategy?

Strategy is one of the most difficult concepts to understand by anyone, and made even more complicated by how difficult it is to implement. A simple definition we could give of what a strategy is might be, for example, the specific decisions made to succeed in the market.

This definition of strategy would entail a whole set of options that help position to the company in a way unique in the context of its industry, with the goal of create a sustainable advantage and a higher value than the competition.

To begin developing a strategy, a series of tools are generally used, such as:

• The SWOT Analysis. This is used to identify the weaknesses, strengths, threats, and opportunities of any company.

• Porter’s value chain. This framework can be used to identify and describe the main functions of any organization, making it possible to distinguish between a company’s primary or essential functions and its support functions, which serve to assist the former.
• CANVAS Model. This is used to identify competitors in four different areas: the target customer base, the product or service offering, the company’s infrastructure, and its financial viability.
• PESTEL Analysis. This helps identify opportunities that arise in the market and the threats that will need to be addressed, whether political, social, technological, environmental, or legal.

Generally speaking, very few companies have a clear, focused, and compelling winning strategy. Furthermore, in most cases, managers tend to prioritize what is urgent over what is truly important from a strategic standpoint. This often happens, moreover, because what they have defined is not really a strategy.

Let’s see what a strategy is not and why some of the ones that are developed are ineffective.

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What is not a strategy.

The main mistake that people make when creating a strategy The problem is that no effort is being made to develop a winning strategy. The causes are usually as follows:

1. End up defining the strategy as a vision. Defining a company’s vision and mission is a fundamental part of creating any strategy; however, these alone are not enough. They do not help you determine which direction to take from a production standpoint, nor do they serve as an explicit roadmap to the company’s desired future. Nor do they address which businesses to pursue and which to avoid, and there is no focus on competitive advantage or the basic components of value creation.

1. Define the strategy as if it were a plan. The strategy, along with the tactics defined to achieve the objectives, is part of the planning process; however, this is not enough, since it does not guarantee that the actions taken will result in a sustainable competitive advantage.

1. To think that the world is changing so fast that it’s impossible to plan a medium- and long-term strategy. In these cases, it is common to assume that it is impossible to devise a strategy in advance, with companies responding to new threats and opportunities as they arise. This approach puts the company in a reactive mode, making it easy for more strategic competitors to gain the upper hand.

1. Defining strategy as the optimization of the status quo, that is, trying to optimize what they’re already doing in their current business. This approach is useful in the short term, but it’s not a strategy.

1. Basing your strategy on your competitors’ best practices, but more efficiently. However, equality is not a strategy; it is a surefire recipe for mediocrity.

A true strategy is always focused on winning, becoming a market leader, having a significant impact on society, and transforming the world.

Companies that don’t develop real strategies are content simply to do their jobs well.

For example, the difference between a small local amusement park and Walt Disney World The thing is, the small park simply aims to have fun rides, provide good service to its guests, and keep as few rides closed as possible. However, for Walt Disney World, the goal is to make people all over the world happy, as well as to become the world’s largest experiential destination. In short, to be the best. And it’s succeeding.

At MioGroup, ever since we got started in the world of digital marketing and strategic consulting, we’ve believed that the best way to help our clients grow was through comprehensive medium- and long-term strategies, which would allow them to achieve short-term results withápractices aligned with that overall strategy. That is why we believe in the End-to-end strategies with a single goal: to help our clients become leaders in their industry. Want to talk?