The word "strategy" is stupid

If you look up the word in the dictionary, you'll be offered a definition along the lines of:

"Strategy" - noun - 'a detailed plan for achieving success in situations such as war, politics, business, industry, or sport, or the skill of planning for such situations'.

If this is what strategy is, then it's no wonder that most of what get's labelled as strategy is completely useless.

A detailed plan for achieving success is only of use if the conditions for which the plan is intended are unchanging.

A plan works only if tomorrow is guaranteed to look and be exactly the same as today.

Obviously this position is completely flawed.

So framing 'strategy' as a noun - in the context of an ever-changing and dynamic world - that gets created, recorded in a lovely slide deck and then gets dutifully executed, means that 'the strategy' was only of relevance to the moment in which it was created.

For 'strategy' to position an organisation for success it firstly needs to be defined as a verb.

Strategy is a critical business process that is ongoing.

Strategic praxis

This ongoing process essentially continuously asks three key questions:

1. What's going on? - continuously scanning the organisations, the competitor landscape, the contextual environment, emerging consumer behaviour, cultural shifts for early signs of change.
2. So what? - making sense of these detected shifts in the prevailing patterns to draw deeper insights into what the changes may mean for the organisation.
3. Now what? - making decisions as to what coherent set of actions need to be taken in response to the change that will position the organisation for success as the projected change unfolds.

The result of strategy shouldn't be a plan - it should be a coherent approach to doing business.

The object of strategy shouldn't be a document - it should be an upgrading of an organisation's way of seeing things.

Achieving this kind of 'fit' within an environment that is always changing requires this active strategic process / strategic praxis to be adopted as a way of working within an organisation, rather than an irregular event held once a year.

The word "strategy' is stupid, because it's misleading and misrepresents the true value of the asset when it is conducted properly.

Strategic praxis should be the heartbeat of an organisation that is committed to building a business that is serious about its long-term success. A reinforcing system of continuous improvement, transformation and reflection.