A strategy that does not fit on one page gets carried out by nobody

A thick strategy document feels thorough. There is a market analysis, a SWOT, target groups, ambitions for three years. The trouble is that it contains no choices, or that they are buried among everything else that also matters. When everything is a priority, nobody knows what to do differently tomorrow.

Try it: ask three people in your company what the strategy is. If you get three different answers, or silence, there is no strategy. There is a document.

One page holds exactly the things that matter. Who you are there for, and above all who you are not. How you differ from the alternative that client is also considering. The two or three things you are betting on this year. And, hardest of all, what you deliberately stop doing or say no to.

That last part is the real test. A strategy that says no to nothing is a wish list. Only when there is something on it that hurts to leave behind do you know a choice was made.

A strategy only works when it is used where decisions get made. With a new request that does not quite fit, with an investment, with an idea everyone likes. The question is always the same: does this help one of the two or three things on the page? If not, the answer is no, or later.

Pin it up, send it round, discuss it every quarter. Adjust it when the world changes, but not every time a good idea walks past. A strategy that changes every month is not a strategy. It is a mood.