A strategy review and implementation meeting takes place months after a new strategy has been launched. All goes smooth until 3.45 pm when all starts sounding a bit messy and a senior member of the team launches the grenade: ‘but what is our strategy”. Other people join in, and more. One, in disbelief, dares to say, what strategy do you mean? The one which implementation we are reviewing? And they all look at her as a nuisance.
There are some possibilities:
- Unlikely. You don’t have a strategy. Then, you are implementing something but without knowing why.
- Possible. You are changing directions, or it’s getting very complex, but that’s it. You have a strategy and you know about it
- Likely: a red herring. You do have a strategy but also you do have a bunch of insecure people who are transferring their anxieties to something that justifies the diversion. It’s easier to ‘agreeing’ that you do not have clarity on the strategy, let alone that you don’t have one, than addressing the tough questions or the complexity of the implementation.
For strategy, read anything else, such as we don’t know what the purpose is, or the vision, or any big narrative.
I’d say that at least 8 out of 10 times, what you have in front is anxiety and insecurity, not the real lack of those big drivers.