Announcing Staying Strategic
Today, I’m launching a workout program called Staying Strategic. It’s the spiritual successor to the Strategy / Culture Bicycle, and it’s the latest in my exploration of what good strategy is and how to develop it.
Staying Strategic is my counterpoint to the dusty plan in the corner. Many organizations spend a lot of time and money developing strategy, but can’t remember what it is or where to find it. Some groups do the extreme opposite, arguing that planning is pointless because “everything’s going to change anyway.”
Strategy has been professionalized to the point of futility. It’s not that it’s not helpful to hire someone to help, it’s that most leaders don’t know what kind of help they need. They don’t know what good strategy is or why it’s useful, which is embarrassing, because they’re “supposed” to know. So they accept help without questioning it, even when it seems like the emperor has no clothes .
This is lunacy. And it’s unnecessary. At the end of the day, being strategic means remembering where we’re trying to go and why. Good strategy tells a clear and compelling story and acts as a compass. It helps guide us, especially in times of uncertainty and chaos.
Developing good strategy requires us to step back, pause, and reflect. This alone is hard. There are many forces in our daily lives that are trying to prevent us from taking that time. Spending tens of thousands of dollars is one way to create that time, but there are cheaper, more effective ways.
Having a good strategy is only marginally useful. The real goal is to act strategically. We are all capable of acting strategically. It doesn’t require special knowledge or an MBA. Acting this way is a muscle, and muscles take practice and repetitions to strengthen.
Acting strategically also isn’t just for our professional lives. It’s something we’re ideally doing in all aspects of our lives. I’ve found that Staying Strategic is particularly useful for individuals going through some sort of life or work transition.
Staying Strategic is a cost-effective way for leaders to plan and strengthen their muscles. At minimum, it gives you structured time to do your own thinking and planning with a trainer (me) and in community with other participants.
Staying Strategic is a workout. It consists of seven sessions over four weeks. In each session, I lead you through exercises that help you strengthen your muscles for asking useful questions, organizing your thinking, playing with scenarios, prioritizing, and experimenting.
Staying Strategic gives you agency. As with any workouts, the more reps you do, the stronger you get. Repetition and iteration help you adapt to changing circumstances and prevents you from coming up with rigid, quickly irrelevant plans.
Staying Strategic is tested. I’ve led over 40 individuals and organizations through the workouts, refining the program along the way.
Staying Strategic is accessible. I share all of my workouts freely and without copyright, so anyone can do them on their own. Leaders are welcome to incorporate them into their organizations, and consultants are welcome to incorporate them into their practices. Or, you can join my Collaboration Gym and do these workouts with me. A year’s membership comes out to $50/month, and I’m offering 50 percent off if you enroll before the end of the year.
So glad this is officially launching. I hear more and more people talking about the skills and capacities we need to be successful at work as “muscles” that need to be strengthened. However I don’t see a corresponding shift in how we invest in change initiatives, collaborative work spaces, or professional development. Understanding we need to practice and strengthen muscles in theory, vs. actually knowing how to do that, is a HUGE gap. REALLY excited to have a place to point folks to really do the work and build muscles, not just learn about more theories.
Thank you so much, Rebecca! It’s frustrating to me that more people don’t have the same observation that you make here. At minimum, I hope that this program encourages other folks in our field to copy the approach (which I just copied from all the other places where we already take a practice-oriented approach, like physical gyms, music, etc.).