Lately various suppliers have bombarded me with strategy proposals. Marketing strategy, sales strategy, expansion strategy…

There is deadly truth about strategy though – it’s almost always over-resourced and over-emphasised. Many business leaders think that if they just get their strategy perfect they will beat the competition. That’s very rarely the case and strategy is very often nowhere near as important as some organisation think it is.

Good strategy establishes common purpose, directs resources and tells organisations what to focus on (and what not to do).

The key differentiator for business is execution.

A ‘competent’ strategy well executed is worth a thousand times more than a perfect strategy badly executed. We took this view in one of my businesses and rather than spending to much time creating strategy and bigger picture we came up with simple and ‘good enough’ step-by-step plan in one afternoon and all the efforts were directed into execution. Turnover tripled within two months!

It’s very easy to talk days about disruption and changing strategy but using newly available technology to execute existing strategies better seems to be working very well for majority of businesses over last few years.

Don’t get me wrong though – strategy if fun. We all love ‘strategy away retreats’ don’t we?