Stop Calling Everything a “Strategy”
Everything’s a “strategy” now.
A new deck? Strategy.
A brainstorm? Strategy.
A vague ambition with no numbers, no timeline, and no accountability? Definitely a strategy.
It’s nonsense. The word has been drained of all meaning.
A strategy is not a plan. It’s not a list of ideas. It’s not a set of intentions.
A strategy is a decision framework that connects where you are with where you want to be — and forces you to choose what you’ll not do along the way.
That’s it. It’s not mystical. It’s not “visionary”. It’s a map that ties actions to outcomes and makes those outcomes measurable. If you can’t describe how your next step delivers value to a customer, your “strategy” is just noise.
Most people use the word to make thinking sound like progress. It’s a comfort blanket. When nothing is shipping, call it “strategic.” When you haven’t made a decision, call it “strategic thinking.” When a plan is failing, rename it “a strategic pivot.”
It’s theatre.
A real strategy only exists when three things are true:
It has a clear objective. Something you can prove, not a sentence about “growth” or “awareness.”
It is linked to measurable value. Someone, somewhere, benefits in a way that can be seen or counted.
It is being executed against. There are tasks, resources, timelines, and people making it happen.
Until then, it’s a hallucination.
Planning and tactics live underneath strategy. Planning is how you line up the steps. Tactics are the specific moves. They’re both critical, but they’re not strategy. Strategy defines why you’re doing it and what will count as winning. Planning and tactics are how you’ll get there and when.
The reason so many “strategies” fail is that no one connects the dots between the three. They say things like “We’ll build our brand through thought leadership” but never define what “brand” means, who it’s for, or how they’ll measure progress. So six months later, they have a few posts, some vanity metrics, and nothing resembling value.
If a strategy doesn’t create movement — new revenue, new users, lower churn, better retention, happier clients — then it isn’t a strategy. It’s a story.
A real strategy is proven in outcomes, not slides. It gets pressure-tested in meetings with people who aren’t impressed by buzzwords. It evolves because it has to, not because someone wanted a new diagram.
Stop hiding behind the word. Stop pretending a Miro board is a strategy. Stop acting like “alignment” is the same as action.
A strategy without execution is just a hallucination with better branding.
If you want to see whether you actually have one, ask yourself this:
Are there objectives being met?
Is measurable value being delivered?
Are people doing something different today because of it?
If not, you don’t have a strategy. You have a fantasy.
And the market doesn’t pay for fantasies. It pays for results.
