Are companies doing strategy or planning?

In his recent book, Roger Martin explains to us that if most of companies want to do or to get a strategic plan, they actually do a planning for the future. They do so because they establish a long list of initiatives with timeframes associated and resources attributed.

Actually, it’s not so easy to see a real difference between a budget and a strategy. According to Roger Martin, there are two main reasons. The first one is that nowadays, the finance is deeply involved in a strategic plan. So much, that it’s becoming difficult to see a real difference. The second one is because people don’t like some much changing. It’s not easy to re-think its position on a market, its business model and all its organization.

Strategy is not planning. I found his definition of strategy quite accurate: “it is the making of an integrated set of choices that collectively position the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage relative to competition and deliver superior financial returns”. Strategy has to be at the origin of the initiatives and absolutely not the initiatives themselves.

To know if you are doing a strategy or a planning, you need to ask you some questions about your winning aspiration, the place you want to play, how you will win and also about your management system.

Check out this interview of Roger Martin he gave to the Harvard Business Review. In less than three minutes, you have an amazing definition of strategy:

You can also clik here to see all the interview.

In his book, Roger Martin gives us another advice. Your strategic plan should not be longer than 5 pages. He tells us an interesting anecdote. He was working for a huge $10 billion successful company and his CEO. They worked all day long together and at the end of the day_ thanks to a good amount of pre-work_ you set up a strategic plan. The CEO was troubled and asked “Is it all we have to do?. Roger Martin had to explain him his thought about strategy and at this end it worked. Moral of this story: quantity doesn’t mean quality.

Article from the new book of Roger Martin and A.G Lafley:
Playing to win: How Strategy Really Works?
Harvard Business Books
272 pages.