Revisiting my definition of strategy

"I revisited my definition of strategy several years ago and realized recently that I hadn't written about it - just presented it privately to executive teams in the context of my strategy work with them. I decided to rectify that oversight by writing this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece on it called Revisiting my Definition of Strategy: Compelling Desired Customer Action. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here."

"For any field to develop, the terms used in the field must be defined. Otherwise, participants can't discuss the field intelligently, and it is therefore hard for the field to advance. I experienced that phenomenon when I joined the founding board of the Skoll Foundation in 1999 (on which I served for 20 years). Its stated purpose was to invest in, connect, and champion social entrepreneurs, which sounded great. At my first board meeting, when we were reviewing candidates to receive the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (which included $1M in funding for their organizations), I asked what I thought was an innocent question: OK, so what is a social entrepreneur?"

"I was relatively taken aback by the multitude of answers I got. Generally, it boiled down to a vague notion of a person doing good for humanity - in an entrepreneurial kind of way. I asked if Mother Theresa was a social entrepreneur. No. OK, how about Steve Jobs? No. How about Muhammad Yunus? Yes. In due course, I gave up and realized that we had a vague definition that provided little guidance as to what was in or out."

A clear, actionable definition of strategy is offered as designing choices that produce a compelling desired customer action. Precise terms are essential for any field to develop because vague concepts prevent intelligent discussion and hinder progress. Ambiguity about what counts as a social entrepreneur illustrated how fuzziness undermines selection and guidance processes within an organization. Collaborative effort with foundation leadership produced a specific, operational definition for social entrepreneurship to guide field-building work and grant decisions, and that definition was published to formalize and share the clarified criteria.

Read at Fast Company