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In the next few posts, we’ll take a look at “strategy” and provide a few questions for you to ponder upon. This is by no means a comprehensive treatise on business strategy, for that you can go here or here or read this book, or sign up for a MBA program.

The point about strategy is to be thoughtful, and gain a competitive advantage via game changing choices and actions. Most of the questions relating to defining strategy are very simple, and a clear strategy will result in a simple answer. It is the simplification that is the hardest part of defining business strategy.

You may think if your strategy is hard to explain, it will be hard to copy. This is a myth. A lack of clarity is not a competitive advantage, it is a competitive disadvantage, because you will lose your execution capabilities as your teams waste time trying to figure out how to align to the strategy.

Your strategy is always on, meaning, you are making choices whether you know it or not. You cannot not have a strategy. Therefore, you might as well make it explicit, write it down, analyze it, communicate it, and plug gaps before you enter the execution phase.