What (Organisational) Strategy Isn't

At EDINA we are just entering into that period where we review and revise our organisational strategy. In the course of a little light research this afternoon to refresh my thinking about and understanding of approaches to doing this, I came across a briefing paper by Ken Chad called Developing and reviewing strategy.

Making reference to a book by Richard Rumelt called Good strategy, bad strategy. The difference and why it matters, Ken offers a short and clear list of things which are confused with, but which are not, strategy:

• vision : where we want to be - an indeterminate future goal
• mission: why the organization exists -the motivation for being in the business
• values: what we believe in and how we will behave

I think I have in the past encountered all of these masquerading as organisational strategy, so this is a concise and useful checklist.

Ken's briefing paper is worth a look - I also like the simple focus of the strategic sweet-spot Venn diagram he offers there.