Long live strategy

As a CEO of a company, it is important to be agile and to be on top (or ahead) of the changing times.
You should also be able to think outside the box, have a growth mindset, and be able to change your leadership style every so often – especially in order to fit the expectations of the new generations: millennials, generation X and generation Z.

Not only that, you must also think about new ways of reaching out to your target audience, building a brand that people love, and be present in all relevant media platforms.

Even the internal processes have been changed. It’s no longer enough to have a budget and try to keep to that; you should have a rolling forecast that’s adjusted each month and quarter.
And what about the company strategy? Is strategy also changing? Is strategy as we know it dead? I don’t think so.

The word strategy originates from Greek and the context of war. A strategy is the art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle that eventually leads to success. Putting it into a business context, a strategy is a high-level plan to achieve one or more goals and how to get there. The plan might be to grow and keep going in a good direction, or to turn around a company that is losing money and make it profitable again.

In other words, a company without a strategy is a company without a plan. Everybody needs a plan, or else you are just drifting along, being reactive about what comes your way, as things happen by accident and without intent. Every organization or company should have a plan and be able to answer the following; where do we want to go? How are we going to get there? What initiatives do we need to get there? and How much is it going to cost (or not cost)?
An organization needs a strategy in order to have everybody pulling in the same direction. It helps employees to know that their contributions matter and that they matter. The plan should be grounded in the culture, the values, and the vision of the company. This is why we are here; this is what we want to achieve, and this is the plan to do it.

You can drop off all your employees in the forest and say ‘meet you at the cabin’, and eventually people will find the cabin. But if you say ‘meet you at the cabin’ and ‘it is in this direction’ – everybody will find it much faster, and most likely they will also end up going there together.

Some experts say strategy is dead – I say long live strategy.