Strategy should be simple

We humans are cursed with turning simplicity into complexity, instead of the other way around. In a desperate bid to develop a ‘sound-bite' for almost every facet of life, we've lapsed into spoken and thinking clichés, which are the antithesis of creativity.

In this last week I've been exposed to two separate (but equally dreadful) business strategies put together (rather than crafted) by young business people.

Strategy is not some subliminally powerful entity, which when developed, will automatically influence either your business or the marketplace. Going to a newsagent and buying one of those penny-dreadful "How to write a whatever" manual is not the way to go. Taking a university business skills or marketing textbook and slavishly following each point of instruction isn't either. The outcome of such approaches is inevitably that the resulting mis-named ‘strategies' are wads of meaningless paper that bear little relationship to real-world business. They also too woolly to translate into their essential action-orientated counterpart, a tactical implementation plan.

Whenever I'm faced with a strategic need I ask myself two simple questions: 1) What are we wanting to do? 2) To whom are we trying to do it? If we have a concise answer to these two questions we can become very creative and also keep referring back to our two questions as the litmus test for relevance.

Paramahamsa Ramakrishna once said that you can squeeze an almanac as hard as you wish, but you won't get a drop of rain out of it. It's only a rainfall predictor. That's what a strategy is. It's the blueprint for the desired construction - but in the hands of a good architect, it can and might well be ‘tweaked' as we say, a significant number of times pre implementation.

What gets in the way of crafting a simple, cogent strategy is most commonly, unnecessary complexity and conformity to some preconceived stereotype. I like to think of the process as shaped like a funnel. If you could take everything related to the strategic need and pitch it into the broad section of the funnel, you'd have great complexity and disorder.

But as you start to go from the general to the particular, and reduce the information and the breadth and depth of it down to simpler and simpler lines of thinking, so you move, conceptually, further and further down the funnel. Eventually, we get to the narrow outlet of the funnel. With a bit of brain power and sometimes the help of the Muse, it's at this point that you arrive at what I call ‘the molecule.'

That's the simple, distilled drop of strategic thinking that is the literal essence of the entire strategy. And that's what strategy is - a plan based on a simple and catalytic idea. One which when added to the mix, acts like the Biblical yeast and causes a ferment that produces an outcome. Sound too philosophical? Try these simple steps: What am I trying to do? To whom am I trying to do it? How am I going to let my target group know what we're aiming at them? Like in a spider web, are all the main threads of reasoning coming back to one focus point? What's the one thing that would most quickly start the process? How would it grow from this point on? How can I ensure that it's sustainable? What would I need to keep changing to keep the concept vibrant and alive? Can I keep feedback coming in? What networking or resources might or will help with my plans? Have I played devil's advocate on my own thinking to explore what might not work? Is there a crystal clear, unambiguous constructive outcome or benefit from the process? Is my purpose and objective so uncomplicated that I can define it in no more than two spoken sentences?

We need to come back to one criterion, which is: What will allow me to deliver my concept to my desired audience? If whatever is in the strategy in some or other way addresses that issue - it deserves to be there. If it isn't answering some part of those two questions, cut, slash and burn - however beautifully written the section may be.

Otherwise, it falls into the category of what I crassly but appositely refer to as ‘semantic masturbation.' It may make the individual feel good, but it does nothing useful for anyone else. So save it for another time.