Strategy that survives contact with reality
Strategy is for the pursuit of viability and advantage. Most of what passes for it is theatre: a document for the board and a story for the outside world.
We help senior leaders read the reality they are standing in and conceive a strategy they can execute from there.
You have probably seen this strategy before
A vision at the top that could belong to any organisation on Earth. A purpose statement nobody can pin to what the business does. A row of pillars generic enough to swap between sectors. Values at the base. It goes up on the wall, and nothing changes.
It happens because strategy has been captured by two demands. Governance, which wants a document to file. Projection, which wants a story for the outside world. Both are met by the annual artefact. Neither is what strategy is for.
The result is a familiar one. Busy organisations that are stuck, reacting to events rather than shaping them, with a strategy their own people do not recognise and cannot act on.
THE PROBLEM
WHAT IS STRATEGY FOR
Viability and advantage
Viability
The organisation's ability to keep adapting to its environment and survive. It is as much structural as strategic: autonomy in the parts, cohesion in the whole, and the capacity to adapt as fast as the environment moves.
Advantage
The organisation's capacity to shape its environment, expand its options, and maintain its position over time. Advantage is relational. It only exists in relation to the terrain you operate in and the other actors who occupy it.
Strategy is not a document or an annual event. It is the ongoing act of orientation: how an organisation continuously interprets, adapts and acts within its environment.
WHO WE WORK WITH
Senior leaders in medium to large, complex organisations
Chief executives, boards and senior teams who have sensed the gap between what the organisation says and what happens on the ground. They are busy but stuck, reacting faster than they can think, and they know another strategy day will not fix it.
We work across the public and private sectors.
WHY US
Practioners, not Facilitators
Facilitators run the day and leave you with the flipcharts and nice statements. We read the organisation, the terrain and the actors with you, help you conceive a strategy you can execute, and stay while it meets reality.
We bring systems thinking, complexity science and military strategy to that work. Not because business is war, but because organisations are complex adaptive systems and every plan meets friction.
We have sat in the strategy sessions that produce nothing. We don’t run them.
CLIENTS
Organisations we have worked with
WHO WE WORK WITH
Strategy Meets Reality Podcast
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LET’S TALK
If your organisation is busy but stuck, we should talk
A discovery call is 30 minutes. You describe the situation; we tell you what we see and whether we can help.