This is part 1 of the Strategy to Execution Playbook.
Want to know more about this series? Find out more here.

What Exactly is a Strategy?

Let's start with the classic dictionary definition. The Cambridge dictionary defines strategy as:

A detailed plan for achieving success in situations such as war, politics, business, industry or sport, or the skill of planning for such situations.

A way of doing something, or dealing with something.

It sounds straightforward enough. If you're reading this, it's more than likely you've done this or been part of building one, even if it wasn't explicitly called a 'Strategy.'

A plan, a roadmap, a set of goals, a choice, a blueprint, words, pictures, diagrams - any of these can be considered a strategy if they answer the core questions that help meet this definition.

If It's So Simple, Why Is It So Hard?

Building a strategy is hard because you're making a commitment.

A commitment that sets the course for your business and demands follow-through. This commitment means choosing a direction while accepting the risks, trade-offs, and potential obstacles that come with it.

That can be incredibly daunting because we're talking about success or failure. As a result, many people start to overcomplicate things because the risks are high, failure is unacceptable and consequences could be dire. 

But it doesn't have to be like that.

Strategy doesn't have to be hard. It can be as simple as a set of questions that help set direction, provide context, and ultimately lay out a path to achieve success.

I've spent most of my 20-year career helping teams and businesses define and answer these questions, and this playbook series is about passing that expertise on to you.

Strategy can be simple and straightforward. It doesn’t have to be perfect, especially when you're just starting out. It just needs to be good enough to help you and your business succeed.

Strategy Is a Deliberate Choice on How to Win

This isn't a new concept. Throughout history, people have been asking themselves how to win. But in today's information age, there is no shortage of guides, books, tools, talks, and courses (the irony isn’t lost on me) all aimed at helping you (and selling you something along the way) to set your strategy.

My philosophy? Keep it simple. Always. 

Strategy is not a backlog or a mission statement. It’s not weeks of workshops, post-it notes, and 100-page PowerPoint decks. It’s about making clear choices and decisions on how you are going to win. It’s about getting things done.

That means asking yourself some tough questions and committing to equally tough answers that specifically outline how you're going to achieve your goal—how you're going to win.

This means making a commitment to those answers and working hard to execute that strategy, translating decisions into actions, aligning teams, and embedding it into daily operations. It will become real and far more likely lead to success.

Strategy Creates Alignment and Sets Direction

Without a clear strategy that can be shared and communicated, it's going to be hard to make decisions, allocate time and resources, or be effective.

A good strategy (sometimes even a bad one) sets direction, allowing you and others to take action with something to measure against.

Every project or task should be challenged: Does this help achieve our strategy? If not, why are we doing it?

That is why strategy is so important and why it's become such a big deal in business. If you're reading this, you need to get better at it. And that's why this site exists. My mission is to help you do this.

Getting Started with Strategy

This Ops Wolf series will help you define your strategy, plan, execute, and ultimately measure what you've done, creating an end to end process for any business to succeed.

Until then, here’s a quote from Michael Porter that really cuts through a lot of noise when it comes to strategy: it’s about defining what you won't do as much as what you will do. If you're starting out, start there.

What Is This Playbook? What's Coming Next?

In the next episode, I'll dive deeper into what makes a good and bad strategy, providing specific examples of what does and doesn’t work—backed by almost two decades of real-world experience.

Want to know what else is in this series? Take a look at the whole playbook.