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BUSINESS
COMMUNITY

Article

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Title

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" Turning Strategy into Result "

Description

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How can leaders translate the complexity of strategy into guidelines that are simple and flexible enough to execute? Rather than trying to boil the strategy down to a pithy statement, it’s better to develop a small set of priorities that everyone gets behind to produce results.
By Donald Sull, Stefano Turconi, Charles Sull, James Yoder
( MIT Sloan Management Review ).

Idea In Brief

Strategy, at its heart, is about choice. Few companies succeed by making a single big bet. Most winning strategies are based on a bundle of choices about, among other things, the customers to serve, the scope of the business, product offerings, and capabilities that interact with one another to help a company make money.

Strategy is inherently complex. We see this in the thick reports and complex frameworks that companies use to describe their strategic choices and how they connect with one another. Describing a strategy favors complexity, but executing it requires simplicity.

How can leaders translate the complexity of strategy into something simple and flexible enough to execute? Your first instinct might be to boil a complex set of choices down to a handful that matter the most.