What is Strategy? A Practical Framework for Strategic Planning
“Strategy” is simultaneously one of the most important words in leadership and one of the least understood.
Ask 10 leaders to define strategy, and you may receive 10 different answers. The word is often used interchangeably with goals, aspirations, priorities, tactics, and even financial outcomes.
I recently came across a company that described its strategy as “growth and profitability.” Those are important outcomes, but they are not a strategy. They describe what the company hopes to achieve, not what it will do differently to achieve it.
That experience sent me on a journey to define what good strategy actually looks like. The framework below distills what I have learned into five practical principles.
What is Strategy?
At its simplest:
Strategy is a fancy word for a plan to win.
More specifically, strategy is a focused set of choices about what an organization will prioritize, how it will create value, and where it will concentrate its time, talent, and resources.
That distinction matters because strategy is not the same as a goal or a list of initiatives:
- A vision or goal defines where you want to go
- Strategy defines the choices you will make on how to get there
- Differentiated strengths explain why you will win
- Tactics and initiatives define the specific work you will undertake
- Enablers provide the foundational capabilities required to execute your strategy
Over the course of my career, I have worked in corporate strategy, moved into strategy consulting, built an in-house corporate strategy function, and now lead a firm at the intersection of strategy and storytelling.
Through those experiences, I have developed a practical framework for helping leadership teams align on the priorities that make up a clear and actionable strategy.
Strong strategies generally follow five principles:
1. Focus on Three or Four Strategic Pillars
We recently worked with a Fortune 500 company that was outperforming many of its competitors but trading at a discount to its peers.
One of our hypotheses was that analysts could not clearly connect the company’s actions to its results. When we asked to review the company’s strategy, we received volumes of materials. Across those materials, we counted 18 items that were labeled as strategic priorities in various places.
Each priority may have been reasonable on its own. Together, however, they created noise and made it difficult to understand the few choices that would truly define the company’s future.
A popular strategy maxim captures the problem: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
This company had a lot of tactics, which created a lot of noise that confused analysts, and contributed to the downward pressure on the stock price.
Limiting a strategy to three or four pillars forces leaders to make choices. It creates clarity about what matters most and makes the strategy easier for employees, investors, customers, and other stakeholders to understand and remember.
Research published in MIT Sloan Management Review supports this approach. Among S&P 500 companies that publicly communicated their strategic objectives, 78% identified between three and five priorities.
2.Start With an Action Verb
A strategy should describe what an organization will actually do. It denotes ongoing investments of time, talent, and resources.
Starting a strategic pillar with an action verb is one of the simplest ways to create that clarity. It pushes leaders to move beyond broad aspirations, generic statements, or outcomes and articulate the choices the organization will make.
Another company I follow describes its approach as a “network-led strategy.” That phrase may be meaningful internally, but it requires considerable explanation before other stakeholders can understand what the company will do differently.
A good pillar should allow people across the organization to understand both the choice being made and the implications for their work. If it merely describes an aspiration or requires several paragraphs of explanation, it likely needs to be sharpened.
3. Build on Differentiated Strengths and Market Opportunities
Perhaps the best-known strategic planning framework is the SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
SWOT can be a useful diagnostic tool, but leaders often instinctively use it as a prompt to focus first on weaknesses. That may be necessary when an organization is in crisis, but it should not automatically become the center of the strategy.
As one executive coach I admire recently observed:
“Your job isn’t to become well-rounded. Your job is to define your win and map your strongest assets directly to it.”
The strongest strategies connect two things: what the organization does unusually well and where the market or stakeholder opportunity is greatest.
The intersection of those two questions is often where an organization has the greatest potential to create differentiated value.
During strategic planning, leaders should consider what capabilities, assets, or relationships truly distinguish the organization; how customer or stakeholder needs are changing; and where those strengths align with the most attractive opportunities.
Weaknesses still matter, but they should not automatically become strategic priorities. The goal is to address the weaknesses that prevent the organization from fully deploying its strengths while concentrating investment where it has the greatest opportunity to win.
4. Tie Each Pillar to a Measurable Growth Driver and Separate the Enablers
The best strategic pillars connect to a measurable driver of growth, not simply efficiency. That might include revenue, monthly active users, customer retention, Net Promoter Score, market share, number of locations, or revenue per customer.
It is also important to distinguish strategic pillars from strategic enablers.
At one company I joined, compliance was identified as the organization’s top strategic priority, for understandable reasons. It was critical to the company’s success, but it did not explain how the business intended to grow or create differentiated value. As a result, the company’s narrative became centered on compliance rather than its future growth.
As we refreshed the strategy, we repositioned compliance as a critical enabler and developed a smaller set of priorities focused on growth. This allowed the company to present a clearer, more forward-looking narrative about where it was headed and how it intended to create value.
Airlines make this distinction instinctively. Safety is always the top priority and an absolute requirement, but an airline CEO is unlikely to open an investor presentation by describing safety as the company’s strategy. Safety enables the airline to operate. The strategy must still explain how the company will attract travelers, differentiate its experience, expand its network, and generate profitable growth.
For my own firm, I generally think of people, process, and technology-oriented initiatives as strategic enablers. They are critical to our success, but they sit beneath the choices that define how we intend to grow and win.
The distinction is simple but important: strategic pillars describe how the organization will create value and drive growth, while enablers provide the foundation required to execute them.
5. Set a Three-Year Direction and a One-Year Action Plan
Strategic pillars should generally remain relevant for approximately three years.
That horizon is long enough to move leadership conversations beyond the immediate demands of the business, but close enough to support credible choices and investments. Within each pillar, the organization should then identify two or three initiatives that must be advanced during the next 12 months.
This brings us back to the other half of the maxim: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.”
Too often, leaders become consumed by the tactical, day-to-day demands of the business. Setting a three-year direction pushes the leadership team to look beyond the immediate while identifying the specific initiatives that must be advanced during the year ahead.
What Does a Good Strategy Look Like?
For my own business, our strategic priorities are:
- Serve clients with uncommon excellence & hospitality
- Win more strategy work that differentiates us
- Activate legacy of trusted relationships and convert to clients
- Design and test new revenue streams
Each pillar is connected to two specific initiatives for the year, a metric, and an owner. Beneath the pillars sit our strategic enablers.
Disney also provides a useful example of a focused strategy. Disney's new CEO, Josh D'Amaro, laid out three priorities in his first earnings call (Q2 FY26):
1. Invest in IP and creativity that breaks through, builds connections and endures
2. Reach more consumers through seamless, engaging experiences worldwide
3. Use advanced technology to strengthen storytelling and increase monetization and returns
Let’s match this against our framework:
- Limited to three or four pillars? Yes.
- Action-oriented? Yes.
- Aligned with differentiated strengths and opportunities? Yes.
- Connected to measurable growth drivers? Yes.
- Supported by a clear horizon and annual initiatives? Yes.
What Comes After Strategy?
Crafting a strategy is step one. Communicating it is step two.
As former Disney CEO Bob Iger has said: “Your strategy is only as good as your ability to articulate it.”
Communicating strategy will be the focus of a follow-up article.
In the meantime, consider evaluating your organization’s strategy against these five principles before your next strategic planning offsite.
