5 Myths About Strategy

Myths are usually based on a plausible half-truth, and they do not immediately lead you astray if you start to act on them. In the discipline of strategic thinking, here are five of the most pernicious myths:

Myth 1: Strategy is about the long-term - Far from being about things we are going to do in the future, strategy is about what we are going to do now in order to shape the future to our advantage.

Myth 2: Disruptors change strategy all the time - In the case of Amazon and the rest of Big Tech, most of the innovative new products and services reflect a single, consistent strategy.

Myth 3: Competitive advantage is dead - The full truth is not that competitive advantage is dead, but that you need to rely on multiple advantages rather than just the one.

Myth 4: You don’t really need a strategy; you just need to be agile - Agility is not a strategy. It is a capability that cannot permanently affect a firm’s competitive position unless there is a strategist taking the right decisions about where to direct that capability.

Myth 5: You need a digital strategy - A company is an organism, and if you try to optimise the parts you will sub-optimise the whole. You don’t want a strategy for digital, IT, finance, HR or anything else – just a strategy for the business.

To read the full HBR article, please click here.