The Preconditions for Strategy

Scarface and Homer were on to something.

Tony Montana, aka "Scarface," once famously assessed, "In this country, you gotta make the money first, then you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women." 

Homer Simpson then piggybacked the sentiment: "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women." 

With strategy-making and organizations, the same principle applies. First you get the people, then you get the culture, then you get the strategy.

I've come to believe that strategy can only do what it does in capable organizations. There are some organizations that simply will not advance because they lack the preconditions strategy necessitates. 

I could imagine an organization, a big one, a sprawling headquarters’, high-visibility, well-known, at which a delivery drops off a manila envelope. In that envelope is a well-crafted, smart and sharp and sophisticated strategy to be executed. The CEO holds it up and says, "let's roll." Every effort is made to execute said strategy, but it flops, because the organization is not well-peopled to make it happen, or the culture is not prepared to make the feedback choices necessary to refine it along the way.

None of this is to say that some people are not capable of executing any strategy. Just that some people are not prepared to execute some strategies. 

Not everybody needs be a strategist. In fact an organization comprised of strategists would probably be ungainly as an airplane with extra wings. 

You want an organization that's filled with people who are strategically literate, who possess a sense of strategic understanding specific to their chosen field. For example, a professional athlete might have a grasp of strategy as it pertains to their sport, but not in many (or any) other ways. That's fine.

When I was teaching at West Point, I argued that every lieutenant ought to be forged with a sense of strategic understanding (specific to modern war). This was not always well received. Some questioned the principle by suggesting a lieutenant, or junior leader in an organization, ought not be mindful of such top-level considerations. 

I always pushed back. A junior leader must always understand the context they find themselves in, which builds motivation for the mission, it improves the organization's performance through empowered independent action, improves feedback loops by directly informing today’s senior leaders, and the long-term play is that your junior leaders are getting a better view of strategy from the ground up so they’re prepared to take the reins down-the-line. 

Culture is a sticky concept, hard to pin down. But it really means the sum of a group. That sum can be more than its individual parts, which is good. That sum can be less than its parts, which is bad. 

Some people insist that culture be elevated above concepts like strategy. The phrase, "culture eats strategy," was in the Silicon Valley bloodstream for some time awhile back. But culture can't tell you where to go or how to get there.

Culture is, again, merely the sum of people. But those people can be the right ones, the ones that are equipped to execute a strategy. And their teamwork, selflessness, and works-well-with-others-ness will make or break the execution of a superior strategy.

So before you strategize, find the right people and culture. You won't be sorry.