Picture Dale, a plumber who says yes to every job and still can’t work out why he’s short on cash. And Priya, who runs a food pantry and writes a grant for a tutoring program because the money is there. Do they have a strategy? They’ve got the raw material of one. They made the choices, one by one. They just never saw them as a strategy.

This week’s idea: Strategy isn’t only a plan you write down. It’s the pattern in the decisions you actually make.

In this episode

• Strategy is what you do: Henry Mintzberg and the pattern in your decisions
• A goal is not a strategy: Richard Rumelt’s diagnosis, guiding approach and actions that fit together
• Strategy means saying no: Roger Martin and Michael Porter
• Strategy is a skill: Richard Whittington and strategy as practice
• The 4Cs: concepts, conduct, context, and composition

Try this week: the napkin test

1. Write what you think your strategy is, in three sentences.
2. List the toughest calls you made this year.
3. Compare. Where do your words and your decisions part ways?

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Sources

• Mintzberg, H. and Waters, J. A. (1985), “Of strategies, deliberate and emergent”, Strategic Management Journal6(3): 257-272.
• Mintzberg, H. (1987), “The strategy concept I: Five Ps for strategy”, California Management Review 30(1): 11-24.
• Rumelt, R. P. (2011), Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.
• Lafley, A. G. and Martin, R. L. (2013), Playing to Win.
• Porter, M. E. (1996), “What is strategy?”, Harvard Business Review 74(6): 61-78.
• Whittington, R. (1996), “Strategy as practice”, Long Range Planning 29(5): 731-735.
• The 4Cs build on Pettigrew (1987), Moore (1995) and Khalifa (2008). Composition, the fourth C, is ours.
• The title echoes Markides, C. (2004), “What is strategy and how do you know if you have one?”, Business Strategy Review 15(2): 5-12.

Dale and Priya are invented. Their situations aren’t.

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Strategizing Skills without the Suits.