The quiet confusion at the centre of modern business
If everything a business is doing is considered strategy, then strategy no longer exists.
What remains is activity.
I have lost count of the number of meetings where someone confidently says, “our strategy is…”, and then proceeds to describe a plan.
Not a bad plan.
Often a very competent one.
And even an impressive one.
But still, not strategy.
This isn’t a criticism. It is an observation that keeps repeating itself across industries, boardrooms, founders, executives, and even agencies who sell strategy for a living. And every time I see it, I see the same opportunity hiding underneath it. Because when a business realises it does not actually have a strategy, only a plan, it is often the most valuable moment in its lifecycle.
Part of the problem is that the word “strategy” has become dangerously elastic. It stretches to cover everything.
We have growth strategies, content strategies, digital strategies, people strategies, integration strategies, AI strategies, sustainability strategies, efficiency strategies. The more complex business becomes, the more strategies we seem to accumulate. At some point, strategy stops meaning choice and starts meaning activity.
And that is where things quietly go wrong.
Plans tell you what you are going to do.
KPIs tell you how well you are doing it.
Processes tell you how to do it repeatedly.
Strategy tells you why this path, over all the others.
When those distinctions blur, businesses stay busy, well-intentioned, and often well-funded, yet strangely directionless. Motion replaces momentum.
Why this mistake is so easy to make
Here is the uncomfortable truth. Plans feel like strategy because they are tangible.
You can see them.
You can present them.
You can measure them.
You can defend them in a board meeting.
Strategy, by contrast, is quieter and more exposed. Strategy forces choice. And choice forces trade-offs. Trade-offs force discomfort.
Real strategy asks questions most organisations would rather postpone.
Where will we not play?
What will we stop doing even if it works today?
Who are we explicitly choosing not to serve?
What advantage are we building that others cannot easily replicate?
It is far easier to optimise what already exists than to commit to a direction that closes doors.
That is why efficiency is often mistaken for strategy. Efficiency is necessary. It keeps you alive. But efficiency alone never decides where you are going. It only determines how well you move in the direction you are already facing.
The moment strategy actually begins
In my experience, strategy begins at the moment a leadership team realises that being good at many things is not the same as being advantaged at one thing.
This is where many discussions quietly derail.
Someone will say, “we just need to execute better”.
Someone else will say, “we need to be more customer-centric”.
Another will say, “we need to grow faster”.
All reasonable. None strategic on their own.
Strategy begins when a business is willing to answer a harder question:
What specific advantage are we building, and what must be true for that advantage to exist?
That question immediately connects brand, product, people, operations, marketing, and finance into a single system. It forces coherence. It exposes contradictions. It removes optionality.
Brand strategy is not a subset. It is the visible edge.
This is where brand is often misunderstood.
Brand is not the storytelling layer that sits on top of strategy. It is the market’s experience of your strategic choices. It is how clearly, credibly, and consistently those choices show up in the real world.
If your internal strategy and your external brand tell different stories, the market will believe the one it experiences.
This is why brand strategy cannot be isolated to marketing. It touches hiring, pricing, product decisions, service models, partnerships, and even how you say no.
When brand is treated as an output instead of a system, businesses confuse awareness with advantage.
A simple test I keep coming back to
Whenever I hear someone describe their strategy, I mentally run a quiet test.
Can they clearly say:
- where they are choosing to play
- how they will win there
- what they will deliberately not do
- which capabilities matter most
- how all of this fits together as a system
If any of those answers dissolve into generalities, it is usually not strategy yet. It is intent. Or ambition. Or a plan waiting for direction.
That is not a failure.It is simply unfinished work.
Why this matters more than ever
Markets are noisier. Tools are cheaper. Execution advantages erode faster than they used to. What remains defensible is clarity.
The businesses that grow are not the ones with the most initiatives. They are the ones with the fewest, most deliberate choices.
They look obvious in hindsight. That is the point.
Strategy is not always novel. Sometimes it is painfully clear once someone has the courage to commit to it.
The purpose of this series
This article is the beginning of a broader series to help leaders develop a sharper internal filter for strategy. To know when they are discussing strategy, and when they are not. To recognise when they are optimising, planning, measuring, or executing, and to stop calling those things strategy. To become more intentional about where real advantage is created.
If this series does its job, some readers will feel slightly uncomfortable. Others will feel relieved. Many will realise that what they thought was strategy was actually something else. That moment of realisation is not a problem.
It is the starting point.
