Strategy Is Direction, Not a Document
Strategy is not a plan or a template. It is the act of creating direction — a shared sense of the future, an honest encounter with reality, and movement that allows organisations to learn their way forward.
Editorial Note: This essay sits within the Cultivated canon on strategy, clarity, and value creation. It forms part of a wider body of work exploring how organisations orient themselves toward meaningful futures — not through plans and templates, but through direction, honesty, and movement.
Strategy Is Direction, Not a Document
Strategies are hard.
Not because they require clever documents or complex frameworks — but because they ask organisations to decide, together, where they are going.
And to be honest about what stands in the way.
Without strategy, energy scatters.
Attention drifts.
Teams work hard, often earnestly, yet move in different directions.
Effort increases.
Progress does not.
Strategy exists to prevent this quiet waste.
At its best, strategy provides orientation — a shared sense of direction that allows people to lead, decide, and act without constant instruction.
We can learn a lot by studying the meaning of words.
Strategy, in its original Greek sense, refers to the office of a general — the act of leading, of spreading out forces with intent. Over time it came to mean something closer to that which leads.
This remains its most useful definition.
Strategy is not control.
It is not prediction.
It is the act of creating direction so others can move with confidence.
Good strategy, in practice, rests on three ideas — though they are rarely articulated cleanly.
First, there must be a compelling sense of the future.
Not a list of targets.
Not a slide deck of ambitions.
But a vivid picture of what the organisation is trying to become.
A painted picture of a future worth moving toward.
People do not mobilise around metrics alone.
They move toward meaning, identity, and possibility.
When the future is described well, it becomes something people can see themselves inside.
Second, strategy requires an honest encounter with reality.
If the future is so compelling, why are we not already there?
This is the hardest part.
It asks leaders to acknowledge friction, constraint, and failure — without defensiveness.
Bottlenecks.
Slow decisions.
Misaligned incentives.
Cultural habits that no longer serve.
Strategy fails most often here.
Not because the future is wrong — but because reality is avoided, or twisted.
Without a shared understanding of what stands in the way, plans become wishful thinking.
Third, strategy demands movement.
Not movement in the abstract — but deliberate action aimed at the obstacles that matter most.
This is where many strategies quietly collapse into documents.
Plans are written.
Initiatives are named.
Owners are assigned.
And then the work proceeds as before, as the strategy sits quietly on the shelf gathering dust.
In healthy organisations, action and tactics does something else.
It teaches.
Tactics become experiments, learning and insights.
Teams try, observe, adjust.
Strategy does not sit above the work — it learns from it.
Direction informs action.
Action sharpens direction.
This relationship between strategy and tactics is often misunderstood.
Strategy is not invalidated by change.
It is refined by it.
The future remains a horizon — but the path toward it adapts as reality reveals itself.
The most alive strategies are not rigid.
They are attentive.
Communication is what holds all of this together.
Strategy only exists when it is understood.
Not once — but repeatedly.
In stories.
In decisions.
In the way leaders explain trade-offs.
People need to know not only what the strategy is — but how their work participates in it.
Over time, clarity creates alignment.
Alignment creates momentum.
Momentum, sustained, creates value.
When strategy works, something subtle happens inside organisations.
Work feels lighter.
Not because it is easier — but because it makes sense.
Teams can see progress.
Decisions feel coherent.
Effort accumulates rather than dissipates.
Engagement emerges — not as a programme, but as a consequence.
Strategy remains difficult.
It asks for imagination, honesty, patience, and restraint — often all at once.
But it is worth the effort.
Because without strategy, organisations often move in the wrong direction.
And with it, even slow progress carries meaning.
A simple test remains useful.
If your strategy requires hundreds of pages to explain, it is not strategy — it is description.
A few clear pages, holding a future, a reality, and a direction of travel, are usually enough.
The rest must be learned in motion.
Bibliography
- Hawken, P., 1987. Growing a Business. Simon & Schuster, New York.
- Rumelt, R., 2011. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters, Main edition. ed. Profile Books.
- The 4 Levels Of Strategy: The Difference & How To Apply Them [WWW Document], n.d. URL - https://www.cascade.app/blog/strategy-levels (accessed 7.16.24).
- Making the Future Visible: Psychology, Scenarios, and Strategy - Hardin Tibbs, 2021 [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/19467567211014557 (accessed 7.16.24).
- What is Current Reality Tree? [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://online.visual-paradigm.com/knowledge/problem-solving/what-is-current-reality-tree/ (accessed 7.16.24).
This piece forms part of Cultivated’s wider body of work on how ideas become valuable, and how better work is built.
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