Strategy

The high-level ”How” and ”When”.

A strategy is ”the way in which a business, government, or other organisation carefully plan its actions over a period of time to improve its position and achieve what it wants”. (Cambridge Dictionary)

A strategy ”is a high-level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty”. ”A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources).” (Wikipedia)

Five quotes from THE book about strategy:

”Strategy is about how an organisation will move forward.” (Rumelt: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, s. 6)

”Strategy is not slogans, not goals.” (Rumelt: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, s. 2)

”Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favourable outcomes. One form of bad strategic objectives occurs when there is a scrambled mess of things to accomplish – a “dog’s dinner” of strategic objectives. A long list of “things to do”, often mislabeled as “strategies” or “objectives”, is not a strategy. It is just a list of things to do. Such lists usually grow out of planning meeting in which a wide variety of stakeholders make suggestions as to things whey would like to see done. Rather than focus on a few important items, the group sweeps the hole day’s collection into the ”strategic plan”. Then, in recognition that it is a dog’s dinner, the table ”long term” is added so that none of them need be done today.” (Rumelt: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, s. 53)

”Good strategy is coherent action backed up by argument, an effective mixture of thought and action with a basic underlying structure I call the kernel. […] The kernel of a strategy contains three elements:
A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical.
A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis.
A set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy. These are steps that are coordinated with each other to work together in accomplishing the guiding policy.

[…] I call this combination of three elements the kernel to emphasise that this is the bare-bones center of a strategy – the hard nut at the core of the concept. It leaves out vision, hierarchies of goals and objectives, references to time span och scope, and ideas about adaptation and change. All of these are supportive players.” (Rumelt: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, s. 77, 79)

Idea: Think of the strategy as a Google map with route instructions how to get from A (today) to B (objectives accomplished, vision fulfilled).

Idea: An executive version of an ”intranet strategy” is probably a plain text plan describing how the intranet team intend to achieve the intranet vision and intranet objectives. Suggestion for the executive version: start small and short with an ”intranet concept”. Suggestion for the internal intranet team strategy: Use Trello or some other tool for planning (as opposed to putting it in a pdf). That way your plan will live and be easy to actually use and change during the work day.