Is your strategy missing this key ingredient?
- Dan Martin
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
TL;DR: Not thinking about and outlining your process is one of the fastest ways to strangle even the most thoughtful strategies. To avoid delivering a strategy disguised as a list of tactics, we often go too far in the other direction, and deliver a plan that’s missing a thoughtful view into how it might work.
Sorry not sorry about the clickbait headline. The other ones all sounded too boring.
But just for you, I won’t bury the actual recipe under 2,000 words of SEO-optimized slop. The missing element in so many strategies (including some I created myself) is process.
I’m not necessarily talking about including a “Process” section in your plan, although it’s rarely a bad idea to include one. I’m talking about not having a complete understanding the process you and the many others who will be involved will undergo to execute your strategy. Or, for those who have done this foundational work (bravo, you!), not being able to articulate the process you recommend and why you recommend that approach when you present said strategy.
Avoiding process in our strategies is often a result of a good instinct. Most of the strategies I’ve seen throughout my career have been a list of tactics organized into a template that makes them more like a plan. Nobody creating an actual strategy wants to do that, so we over-correct. And what we get is a high-level strategy that stays out of the weeds…and is fundamentally unrealistic and unachievable.
So how do we find that elusive balance between the view from 30,000 feet and the view from underneath Wayne Szalinksi’s grass?
Strategy cannot exist without imagining implementation
Even the most ironclad-seeming strategies are educated guesses. You’re not going to be able to guarantee its success. But…but…but! No, you can’t. None of us can see the future.
Our job in creating strategies is to make the best guesses possible with the information we have at our disposal. That means approaching the plan from as many angles as possible, both to make sure you’re dreaming big enough and to poke every hole that needs to be poked. Process, then, is one of the most important elements of strategy, because it’s how we figure out how something might actually work in practice.
You might be thinking, “But that would slow me down. I need to get this out the door as soon as possible.” Been there. For most of us, though, a strategy passes through at least one, and probably more, approval. I promise you that nothing will slow you down more than the executive team putting a hold on the entire project. One powerful way to help get your strategy through the leadership meat grinder? You guessed it: process.
While we know there are no guarantees that any strategy will work, many leaders are still consciously or unconsciously looking for the “sure thing.” Which means that their buy-in is dependent on the confidence they have in what you’re presenting; that comes from how much you can show of what’s likely to happen from start to finish.
In addition to buy-in, the time to map out process during the creation of any strategic plan provides a host of other benefits, including:
It helps you understand what it will truly take to implement your plan.
Common sense? Maybe, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t take this step. It requires deep thinking and, at least in my case, a certain level of vulnerability. I almost always have to remove things I previously liked or add steps I didn’t want to add, knowing that some things sound great on paper and simply won’t work in practice. If it’s not grounded in reality, your strategy is just a grand dream.
It helps you anticipate and proactively answer detailed questions.
Getting past the approval stage is only one step in bringing your strategy to life. Because of all of the factors that can disrupt and shift any plan and because you’re reliant on the collaboration of a bunch of different human beings in every step, any number of obstacles will appear the moment the rubber meets the road. Having a clear idea of at least some of the objections you might run into early on can increase your implementation speed later and help smooth over some hang-ups that could have caused major slowdowns.
Easier said than done, right? Here’s how I do it in practice.
How to integrate process into your strategy without putting people to sleep
The other reason people avoid talking about process? It’s boring. People love sweeping, visionary ideas and hearing about the utopias we’ll create when we are done, but most don’t want to hear about the work it will take to get there.
That’s too bad (for them), because they’re going to have to hear about it from you. Here are the ways I integrate processes into my strategies to keep phones in pockets and yawns to a minimum:
Map out a process that includes every possible detail
The high-level version you’re going to show in your slide or Canva image is an end product, not what you start with. In this stage, after you’ve completed your strategy in the broad strokes (Overview, Framing/Landscape, Goals/Objectives, Budget, Chosen Opportunities, Strategic Choices/Initiatives, etc.), build out the process using your favorite spreadsheet software.
I prefer to start by listing every element in the process I can think of, then consolidating and re-ordering in terms of priority. I also always add a Notes column as a place to jot down information relative to specific roles as I think of it. One of the goals of this exercise is to get you thinking about the plan in milestone terms, and I never want to lose any of the thoughts that come to mind, as they’re almost always valuable down the road.
When you’re done, you’ll have a ton of milestones, sorted into priority order. Don’t forget to include milestones for the work before the work begins, like kickoff meetings and information sharing, and milestones that are completed after launch (if it’s that sort of strategy), like postmortem reviews and ongoing promotion.
Review the process through Everything Works and Nothing Works lenses
At this point, I take the complete process and review it through two different lenses, one at a time. One lens assumes that the strategy succeeds beyond your wildest dreams, while the other assumes that everything that could go wrong, does. You can do this in any order you want depending on if you’re a “good news first” or “good news last” type of person.
I’ve found both helpful in different ways. The overly positive lens provides a gut check to help me make sure I’m thinking big enough. You need your plan to be realistic, but it’s also easy to succumb to the temptation to sandbag in certain areas. That way, even small progress looks like a win. A good strategy should include at least some level of stretch, and this lens can help you refine it as such.
The other lens helps you prepare for the worst-case scenarios by either adding or planning for ways to counteract obstacles. You can be bold without sticking your neck out in unnecessary ways, and this lens allows you to be clear-headed about what could reasonably go wrong at every stage in your plan.
Cut the process back to a one-page version
Once you’ve completed those exercises and made refinements, it’s time to cut back to the “Executive Slide” version of your process. Creating this is an art from and one that can take some practice to get down, especially considering that every executive consumes information differently.
The best guidance I can give here is to consolidate as many steps as possible in your process, with the goal of presenting something like a 5-step plan (7-step maximum if you can manage it). You want the process to be eminently understandable, as you may only have a minute to present it, and for it to seem both bold and achievable.
Also, as you’re creating and editing, ruthlessly exclude any information the executive or executive team doesn’t need. Keep all of it in your back pocket so you can answer questions promptly, but only include on the slide and in your talking points what they absolutely need to understand what you’re saying and to make a decision.
Include a “Risks and Obstacles” section in the final strategy
Not everyone agrees that these are useful; to each their own. I like adding a simple version of a Risks and Obstacles slide, usually in a Table format, near the end of the presentation. I usually spend very little time talking about it.
The reason I like it is that it shows the executive team and your boss that you’ve thought through both the best- and worst-case scenarios. Most executives innately know that the reality will be somewhere in the middle. You don’t have a crystal ball, and they know it; what they want is that confidence, and this slide is one way for you to help build yourself up in their eyes.
Plus, it’s easy to create after you go through your “Utter Armageddon” process review (see above).
If you do these things, will it help your strategy work as you’ve outlined it? If your suppositions and assumptions end up coming true, sure (at least to some extent). But that’s very unlikely to happen.
I’d wager that any strategy that lays out a plan for any length of time longer than a few weeks will need at least some level of adjusting over time. I imagine there were a lot of solid client acquisition strategies in the wealth management world that didn’t take into account Bear Stearns running out of money on March 13, 2008.
If you only understand the “why” and the high-level “what” in your strategy, every small change has the potential to grow into a disaster. The point of focusing on implementation when you create your strategy is to know the process so intimately so that, when something does happen that causes you to shift, you can adapt quickly. It allows you to plan and hope for both the best and the worst.
So, the next time you’re working on a strategic plan, take the time to figure out exactly how you would turn that plan into reality. I can guarantee it will improve the final product.
Thank you for reading!
If you’re interested in talking through any specifics or have questions for me on applying any of this information to your work or organization, email me at dan@heliosmarketingllc.com or send me a message via my contact form.
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