A strategy without choices is not a strategy – it is a dream of happiness

Do you remember the TV series *Uusi Päivä*? The theme tune, which became well known as the series’ theme music, All the best The song is about something that is more than just a ”dream of happiness”. I think it contains a surprisingly good lesson in strategy, involving a strategic choice.

Companies in strategies After all, there is plenty that is good and beautiful. We want to grow profitably, be customer-focused, enhance the employee experience, innovate, embrace digitalisation, expand internationally, improve efficiency, build a strong culture and, of course, ensure we act responsibly. Who would disagree with any of this?

The problem arises when we ask the following question: Which of these is more important to us than any other?

At that point strategy work becomes difficult. And that is precisely where it really begins. A good strategy is not a collection of objectives, but a set of conscious strategic choices about what the company focuses on – and what it does not.

Strategic work in day-to-day life begins with making choices and setting limits

When drawing up a strategy, it’s easy to be tempted add. When the operating environment changes, we add a new objective. When a competitor does something interesting, we add a new development project. When technology opens up a new opportunity, we add a new strategic theme.

The end result could be seven strategic priorities, twelve flagship projects and a strategy document that has ballooned into a ‘wish list’, in which almost everything seems equally important.

In that case, the company’s strategy no longer guides its decisions. It essentially just sets out all the positive things we hope will happen.

Strategic thinking works the other way round. It should narrow down the options.

Even when the operating environment changes so significantly that it forces us to make a new strategic choice, this usually means that we have to abandon an old one.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s In this line of thinking, choice has a profound significance: people do not merely choose things, but construct their identity through their choices. When applied to organisations, this idea is fascinating.

Strategically speaking, a company is not what it says it aims to be. It is what it consistently chooses to be.

That is why one of the most important questions in strategic planning is an uncomfortable one: What don’t we do?

When everything is important in a strategy, nothing is really important.

Let’s imagine a management team that has identified five key priorities for the coming strategic period: growth, profitability, customer experience, internationalisation and staff development.

They are all valid. They are all important.

But then the sales director needs three new salespeople to drive growth. The production manager needs investment to improve efficiency. HR wants to launch a leadership development programme. International expansion requires time and money to open up new markets.

However, there isn’t enough money or time for everything. Now is when a strategy is really needed.

The strategy should help to address the question of what takes priority when it comes to resources. If a company’s strategy does not help it to make such a choice, it is more a set of objectives than a strategy.

The Stoic philosopher Seneca expressed the same idea almost two millennia ago through the figure of a sailor: If a person does not know which harbour they are sailing towards, no wind is the right one.

There’s certainly no shortage of momentum within the organisation. The market brings headwinds and new opportunities, customers have their expectations, technology is evolving, and good ideas are emerging from within the organisation. But without a chosen harbour, we won’t be able to distinguish a good opportunity from the one that’s right for us.

Here is one of the key questions in strategic leadership: are we able to say ‘no’ to even an attractive opportunity if it does not take us in the direction we have chosen?

Strategic choices are reflected in the calendar and in euros

If a company claims that customer experience is a strategic priority, but nobody is given the time to develop it, then in practice it is not a strategic priority.

If a company says that building a new business is important, but all its key personnel spend 100 per cent of their time running the existing business, the strategy says one thing and the calendar says another.

And the calendar usually wins out.

These strategic choices are evident in at least three areas:

In time. How do people actually spend their working hours in their day-to-day lives?

In cash. Where are investments, recruitment and development budgets being channelled?

Please note. What does the management team monitor, what questions are asked, and what are people aware they are responsible for?

If these do not correspond to the choices made in the strategy, the organisation effectively has two strategies: the one set out in writing and endorsed by the board, and the one that people actually follow in practice.

It is this latter ”shadow strategy” that will ultimately determine future results.

What does a good strategy require of the management team?

Instead of using complex models, you can sometimes try to clarify your strategy by asking three simple questions:

• What are the two or three things we absolutely must succeed at over the next few years? Not seven. Not twelve. Which ones really make the difference?
• What do we do, and what do we choose not to do? What opportunities, however good they may be, are we prepared to give up so that the most important matters receive the attention they need?
• Where, therefore, are our resources being channelled? What do these strategic choices mean in terms of euros, people’s time, investment and the management team’s attention?

The third question usually reveals whether the first two are genuine.

It is easy to say that something is strategically important. It is harder to reallocate funds to it from another project. It can be even harder to stop doing something we have been doing for years.

That is precisely why Strategy requires leadership.

Strategic leadership is not just about setting a direction. It is also the ability to stick to the chosen direction when there are constantly new and interesting alternatives around, but the original choice remains the best one for your organisation.

A good strategy is more than just a dream of happiness

Let’s return to *Uusi Päivä*.

The idea of something good and beautiful, which is more than just a dream of happiness, works very well, in my view, as a metaphor for strategy too.

We need a dream. An organisation needs a picture of where it wants to go – a vision, to use a familiar term. Without ambition and hope, a strategy can easily be reduced to a budget, an annual plan or project plans for ‘must-win battles’.

Although dreams are important, they don’t tell us what we’ll be doing on Monday morning. Strategy and strategic choices, broken down into key actions, provide insight.

It says: This is the direction we’re heading in. We must succeed in these matters. We’ll devote our time, our money and our best people to them. And we’re now saying ‘no’ to these matters.

At that point, the strategy becomes more than just a dream of happiness.

It will lead to a choice and a roadmap towards the harbour of success.

The next time you review your company’s strategic priorities in the executive team, try asking this one question:

If everything in this paper is important, which of these is so important that we are prepared to give up something else for its sake?

The answer may reveal more about a company’s strategy than any strategy page.