Strategy that stalls

What to do when the steam runs out

Strategy stalls. A lot. It's something we don't talk about much, because we focus on the Big Idea. We get pretty myopic on the intellectual underpinnings of the strategy. We spend gobs of time building and developing and obsessing over the road-map to success.

And we forget to put fuel in the tank.

This is a problem in that any and every organization requires fuel to get where it is to go. Just like a car, just like a plane, just like a tank - if you want to get somewhere, you need energy to get there.

What often happens is there's some sort of organizational decision, a room with the Big Wigs gets together and hammers out some organizational Way Forward. It'll often be at or after an "offsite," which is a social gathering some organizations use to get to some necessary decision.

Ok, then what? This is the problem. It may well be that the leadership has pointed to some North Star. It may well be that those in said organization believe in the North Star. But over time, no matter what, that faith and fervor starts to dissipate as surely as a runner who crosses mile 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 in a marathon.

It stalls. "Stalls" is meant to capture any drop-off in the energy required to advance a strategy. Admittedly this can look very different in several different contexts. You can envision a leadership or staff shift-change, bringing in a new cohort of those that are not committed to the previously established strategy. Or an outside force that drives the organization to look to other issues, leaving the original strategy dormant while the "crisis of the day" takes over. Or, more commonly - the natural degradation of energy over time - drip, drip, drip, until there is far less left to push forward anymore.

There are likely many ways to recommit an organization to an important North Star and strategy to get there. But by far, my favorite is the do-over.

Yep, that's right. Do-over. Start over. Never forget there's an unlimited amount of start-overs in strategy-making. You can always simply reconvene, refocus, and recharge the battery toward some desired endeavor. The reality is that the picture is always changing somewhat because the world around us is constantly in motion. So it makes sense periodically to come back to the table and re-start the process.

It may be that the North Star and objectives remain roughly the same. But you will almost certainly find that the sit-down considerations energizes and empowers the players that will get the strategy up from stall-mode and back on the road to success.