"Strategy is a statement about how you win At its core, strategy is not a plan. It's a statement about how an organization intends to win a specific competitive game. Strategy is always a sentence that looks something like this: "We are going to win the __________." The blank is not filled with a tactic. It's filled with the arena of competition that matters most, the axis on which advantage will be decided and the form of instability the organization intends to exploit or survive."
"Until that blank is explicit, there is no strategy - only activity. Today's business culture is deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty. As a result, it tends to collapse strategy into a single plumb line: one vision, one roadmap, one narrative of inevitability. This happens for understandable reasons. Stable systems reward coherence. They reward focus. They reward execution against a known pattern. Under those conditions, multiple strategic options feel inefficient. Hedging looks like waste and optionality like a lack of conviction."
Many companies abandon strategy during stable periods because they misunderstand strategy as a plan, roadmap, or single line of action rather than a competitive choice. Strategy is a statement about how an organization intends to win a competitive game and requires naming the arena, axis of advantage, or form of instability to exploit or survive. Examples of decisive axes include cost, speed, trust, scale, ecosystem control, talent density, legitimacy, adaptability, and time. Until that blank is explicit, activity replaces strategy. Business cultures uncomfortable with uncertainty collapse strategy into one vision and roadmap, treating optionality as waste and creating fragility when systems change.
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