Heading for burnout

One of the dangers of not having a clear strategy is that an organisation then ends up choosing, or being forced to take on, too many random projects (that collectively don't propel it forward towards any one direction) and heading for burnout.

In a strategy void, the risk is that projects are randomly handed over to operational teams who then have no logically constructed argument to justify why not executing the ideas is ultimately more beneficial for the desired future state of the organisation.

The danger is that people with loud voices end up calling the shots as to what gets done and all of the shots don't really take the company anywhere worthwhile.

This is not a picture of agility, this is organisational burnout.

The result is a collective feeling of powerlessness and resentment and a business that can best be characterised as stressed out and lacking in confidence.

What a strategy offers is a logically-defendable framework for why certain choices are preferred over others. It offers some kind of coherence for the choices that get made.

Without this, all choices are valid and on the table. And then what gets done is really just a matter of subjective opinion emanating from one (or a few) persons.

Where people in an organisation are suffering from mental burnout, a poorly clarified strategy is often the leading perpetrator.