There is a quiet problem within many companies.
They think they have strategy, but they actually only have presentations, impeccable slides, ascending graphics, elegant words, but strategy... very little.
This is brutally explained by the book Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, one of the most respected academics in the world in strategy.
Rumelt says something many executives don't want to hear: most corporate strategies are not strategies, they are lists of aspirations.
Phrases like:
"To be market leaders."
"To promote innovation."
"Sustainable growth."
"Digital transformation."
Everything sounds good, but it doesn't mean anything, because a real strategy always has something uncomfortable: decisions, choosing what to do... and above all what not to do, choosing where to compete, choosing which problem to solve, choosing where to concentrate resources.
But many companies avoid such difficult decisions.
And then they end up producing something Rumelt calls "bad strategy," a lot of ambition, a lot of goals, but no clear decision.
That's why there are organizations that work a lot... and still feel like they don't move forward.
Because in strategy there is an uncomfortable truth:
Clarity is always more powerful than ambition and perhaps that's why the best question a leader can ask is not: "What do we want to achieve?"
But something much more uncomfortable:
"What are we willing to stop doing?"
