When I was young we’d gather to play football. After each play we’d huddle and draw in the sand the next play designed to score the touchdown and inevitably win the game. The vision was clear, a strategy was developed that leveraged the best talent we had that day and we all knew our assignment. Back then we knew how to plan. It was practical and it was effective.
Somewhere we lost the ability to plan. We came to believe that old fashioned common sense couldn’t be the rule any longer. We now had to learn special terms, get them in the right order and, above all, it needed to sound good. We replaced function with form.
“Too many organizational leaders say they have a strategy when they do not. Instead, they espouse what I call “bad strategy”. In this article, I try to lay out the attributes of bad strategy and explain why it is so prevalent. Heavy with goals and slogans, corporate boards sign off on strategic plans that are little more than wishful thinking. The only remedy is for us to demand more from those who lead. More than charisma and vision, we must demand good strategy. I have had the opportunity to discuss the bad-strategy concept with a number of senior executives. In the process, I have condensed my list of its key hallmarks to four points: the failure to face the challenge, mistaking goals for strategy, bad strategic objectives, and fluff. ” Source: The perils of bad strategy – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Strategic Thinking:
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