The single most damaging misconception about strategy is that it is a set of financial performance goals. The so-called "strategies" created by many managements are nothing more than three-to-five year financial performance forecasts. They are then labeled "strategy" and shipped off to the board of directors which goes through the motions of discussing how big the numbers are. Strategy is not your aspirations. Strategy is concerned with how you will arrange your actions and resources to punch through the challenges you face.

The single most damaging misconception about strategy is that it is a set of financial performance goals. The so-called "strategies" created by many managements are nothing more than three-to-five year financial performance forecasts. They are then labeled "strategy" and shipped off to the board of directors which goes through the motions of discussing how big the numbers are. Strategy is not your aspirations. Strategy is concerned with how you will arrange your actions and resources to punch through the challenges you face.

A real strategy is a coherent mix of policy and action designed to overcome a significant challenge. So a sensible employee might indeed say that they have no idea what the organization's strategy is - because it seems to have none. Senior managers' so-called "strategies" are heavy with aspirations and goals, but light on how resources and strengths will be combined to achieve them.

You overcome the logical resistance to change by proving that a new approach actually works, usually on a small scale.

As I worked to explain how to avoid bad strategy, I began to see that one cannot really evaluate or criticize a strategy unless there is a fairly clear statement of the problem the strategy is trying to solve.

The US needs military/defense, economic, and social strategies. A medium-sized business, by contrast, is normally best off focusing its efforts on a single crucial objective.

A good strategy is not always successful, but even an "inappropriate" strategy may be an actual strategy. A "bad strategy" is one that doesn't even try to address an important challenge. Instead, it speaks of aspirations, visions of the future, lays out performance goals, or simply lists a bunch of unconnected actions.