Is It Strategy, Planning, or Execution? Introducing The Strategy Alignment Stack

The word “strategy” is one of the most misused terms in business. Many organizations believe they are discussing strategy, but what they are actually discussing is planning or execution.

Oftentimes in strategy meetings, you hear upper management say things along the lines of “The strategy is to ship this xyz feature” or “We need to improve our customer engagement”. Suddenly the outcome becomes a backlog of projects, and this is where several key concepts begin to blur together.

That confusion gets passed down to execution teams to run with and now you have teams that are led to believe that they are working towards this important strategy when what they are really doing is executing and delivering features under the false pretense that this is what has to be done to reach “the strategy”.

A bad strategy not only affects how a team operates and the value it delivers, but it stems from a deeper problem, it comes down to the organization's culture. Not to mention the price some organizations pay for rolling out a bad strategy; the time invested in doing things that were not what was expected, the efforts were wasted leaving the team discouraged and the money spent in a strategy that did not make the cut and eventually needs to be discarded. So what was the point of the strategy in the first place?

To simplify this distinction, I use a framework I call The Strategy Alignment Stack.

One reason strategy gets confused with planning and execution is the pressure leaders feel to present roadmaps instead of strategic choices. There's this silent urgency and demand in getting things done and out the door that often comes with a suppressed fear of questioning the “why are we doing this?” or “what problems are we trying to solve?”.

Now let's touch on the unspoken never-ending race. The leadership board; who is doing what and who did it first and what was the major impact. The staggering competition for getting through the finish line first means how fast can you ship xyz but nowadays that is what we call innovation. This is why organizations reward activity instead of clarity, because accelerating delivery takes higher stakes over taking the necessary precious time to clarify the long term outcome.

Strategy requires tradeoffs, which many stakeholders and teams avoid asking the hard questions such as “what will we NOT do?”, “where will we NOT compete?” or “what problems are we NOT trying to solve?” helps provide visibility into an opaque strategy. Identifying what does not contribute to the long term outcome level sets the horizon for direction and positioning and alignment on consensus regarding clear strategic choices.

Failure to understand, and align on strategic choices can lead to substantial financial loss. Let's consider the following insights:

• Bad strategy not only causes strategic misalignment but it also wastes about 60% of a company's resources (1).
• Strategy execution against a bad strategy can cost companies up to 10% of their annual revenue (2).
• About 60% of senior executives acknowledge their firms often struggle to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and its day-to-day implementation (3).

I have often drawn inspiration from The Golden Circle framework by Simon Sinek to break ideas down in a simple and digestible way. In a world of fast-paced programs and projects, simplicity can almost feel like the calm after the storm because it clears the mind from all the chaos.

Building on that idea of clarity, I use a simple framework I call The Strategy Alignment Stack.

The Strategy Alignment Stack separates three layers that are frequently conflated in organizations: strategy, planning, and execution.

If organizations choose not to make deliberate tradeoffs, then they must be more than willing to accept the consequences that a bad strategy will bear upon the culture and their teams. Typically, the modus operandi is investing a rigorous amount of effort around the execution layer. Ready, set, Go!

Suddenly everyone is so certain on what they think they want to get executed and are ready to allocate the necessary resources to achieving the WHAT. Game on and the first move has been made.

Then the next move in the game is the HOW, the planning must be done, the deadlines and timelines are established and the teams are ready to run with their list of things that someone in some very important meeting said that had to be done.

As work is being delivered, and before the game finishes, someone from that very important meeting starts to doubt the work that is being shipped and then eventually others follow to question the WHY, the bad strategy that never really had the alignment it deserved and lacked strategic choices that would achieve a long term outcome.

In my experience working on complex technical programs and in the startup world, the real issue is usually not execution. The culprit tends to be the lack of strategic choices which creates the painful symptom of misalignment between the strategy and the plan that leaves most teams asking “why are we doing this again?”

Most if not all organizations have the capability to execute and deliver something if the right resources and allocations are accounted for. This is where teams shine and have demonstrated to be true experts but where I have identified the main gap between the layers to be at the strategy stage. Because if the WHY cannot be answered, then the lack of clarity cascades down to the planning (the HOW) and finally the execution (the WHAT). Subsequently the ripple effect brings far more profound lessons learned rather than the expectations on value the impact should have had.