Strategy: how wide, how deep, how long?
An article in the 'Leading Strategy' series
In the first article in this ‘Leading Strategy’ series I looked at some of the ways in which strategy work can start in an organisation, and recommended that the first question that an organisational leader needs to ask is ‘Why?’ - what is driving the need or desire to work on the organisation’s strategy at this particular time? The answer to this will help determine the nature of the strategy work that is needed, and the process by which this will be undertaken.
Coincidentally, last week I came across a paper, ‘Strategy as practice or parody? A case study of the strategic plan in a university’ [full citation and link: Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2025). Strategy as practice or parody? A case study of the strategic plan in a university. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 41(1), 101392. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2024.10139 ] which illustrated very well why it is important to ask that question first. In summary, the senior management of a large traditional state European university decided to develop a new strategic plan as the previous one was seen as becoming out-of-date - and there was also a governmental mandate that required state universities to formulate strategic plans.
Despite a genuine bottom-up process and consistent continual involvement from departments across the University, the result was a strategic plan that lacked a clear purpose: the attempt to include lots of perspectives resulted in an output that was anodyne and lacked actionable intent. Many of those involved started enthusiastically - being selected to participate can be flattering and boost egos! - but they then lost much of their interest and belief in the value of the work and ended up feeling cynical about the outcome. All that organisational effort - resources, time, energy - just to result in something that lacked credibility, ownership and a platform for action; and more was lost from an organisational perspective than was gained, even if the university’s senior management didn’t realise it at the time. They had wanted a strategic plan, but they hadn’t really asked the question ‘Why?’, with the result that the strategy work didn’t have specific questions that needed to be answered or challenges that needed to be addressed.
I’m going to extend the critical questioning in this article by looking at the next question that organisational leaders need to address: what should be the scope of their strategy work at this time?
When you read articles, books or social media posts that state “strategy should be done like this”, or “this is why organisations fail at strategy” your natural reaction is to think that you are failing your organisation by not adopting these “best practices”: your organisation’s strategy work needs to include ‘Open Strategy’, ‘Strategic Foresight’, ‘Scenario Planning’, ‘Futures Thinking’, ‘OKRs’, as well as traditional ‘PESTLE’ and ‘SWOT’ analyses (or are these now out of favour?), plus McKinsey’s latest iteration of their ‘7S Framework’. Oh, and there are also geopolitical risks, climate change and AI to consider - and your organisation’s ESG and DEI ‘strategies’. Have you considered all the possible risks from a multitude of uncertain futures (and if not, why not?) and how your organisation might react and deal with each one of these? And there might be at least one BSI or ISO standard about strategic management that your Board expect the organisation to meet.
It’s no wonder that - like the university in the research paper - organisations end up with outcomes from their strategy work that are just nice words but fail to serve any real purpose and inspire any meaningful action.
It is really, really important to understand the focus of your organisation’s strategy work at a particular time, and the horizons and limiting influences that help to define its scope. It’s not about producing the perfect, all-encompassing definitive strategic plan, an encyclopaedia of potential eventualities and responses expressed in the latest fashionable jargon and displaying prowess in whatever strategy techniques are getting ‘likes’ on LinkedIn or being championed in HBR articles - rather it’s what matters now that counts, what helps your organisation on the next stage of its strategy journey.
I’ll illustrate this with three examples:-
In the case of the university in the study, the attempt to devise an all-encompassing strategic plan in the unrecognised absence of a focal question resulted in a lowest common denominator outcome with no actual benefit. The reality of how an academic organisation works: how faculties develop based on the people within them rather than through a management plan, and the organisational power dynamics associated with this; the expectations and perceptions of students with increasing importance on competition with other institutions for the university’s financial health; the current dynamics of research assessment and funding - all these were significant contextual factors that were not considered in focusing the development of the university’s strategic plan, resulting in something that was bland and had no practical use and was consequently ignored internally (although it might have been presented externally to ‘tick a box’)
In the National Health Service in England (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have some structural differences although the underlying principles are the same) hospitals are set up as Trusts with some defined degree of apparent delegated independent autonomy. In practice however there are significant constraints on this, with tight financial budget controls and performance oversight from regional and national layers of the structure, together with a high level of political pressures and demands. The training and remuneration of healthcare professionals is set at a national level, and political policy affects international recruitment. Demand is heavily influenced by socio-environmental factors in the populations they serve that are outside the influence of the NHS, and evidence-led developments in clinical practice will drive improvements in patient care, often with implications beyond the hospital’s areas of responsibility and hence also requiring changes in patient care in other organisations in the health and care system. The scope of an NHS Hospital Trust’s ‘strategic plan’ has to be considered within this context: for example, there is no point in considering creative possible scenarios ten years hence, but every point in focusing on improving patient outcomes through initiatives to speed-up patient pathway flows through the hospital and wider local health and care system: arguably at Trust level the strategy work is more operationally-focused than considering possible futures that are outside the current remit and influence of the organisation
We’ve all heard of the ‘strategy success’ stories of businesses that have redefined their markets or adopted new technologies and changed their business models accordingly (e.g. from local horse-drawn carriage makers to national internal combustion engine car manufacturers), but although with the benefit of hindsight these are often portrayed as examples of strategic brilliance there is increasing recognition of the role that chance and good fortune played in some of these ‘case studies’. In an early-stage company pioneering a novel innovation, arguably the emphasis of the organisation’s strategy work should be to foster a culture of ‘opportunity exploration’, encouraging testing potential new markets and applications of its products or services: the aim is to inspire innovative thinking and considered risk-taking, supported by enabling governance systems and speedy decision-making, with the business being underpinned by a core financial plan that recognises the potential variation in these risks and opportunities.
There are as many other examples as there are organisations: the key point is that for each one understanding the scope of its strategy work that will make this useful at this moment in time is an important consideration: in some cases there will be a need to think about possible futures in all their creative and uncertain glories, whilst in others there are critical shorter-term challenges to focus on or constraints on their ability to act.
Strategy work in an organisation needs to be relevant and useful: its purpose is to help the people in the organisation make sense of where their organisation is heading and how they can contribute to this. It needs to motivate and guide action, and to be a platform that leads to further development. It is the next stage of the organisation’s strategy journey that matters, helping it survive and thrive so it can move forwards towards the stage of its journey after that.