The term “strategy” is derived from the Latin word “strategus” or the Greek word “strategos,” which has the meaning of “military general.” It is no wonder many references to the strategy include aspects of military concepts, and in many, if not all, armies are one of the highest military rankings. While for sure strategies are operationally embedded in military maneuvers and proliferate wartime stories, they are equally valuable in other areas. In this article, the focus is on the importance of having a strategy but done in my own unique way to ensure you are strategizing from the right perspective.
Before you can formulate a strategy, you should already have a vision for what the strategy relates to. In prior articles, I indicated a few realities:
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Strategy supports the structure of a business.
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Strategy provides discipline in conduct; and
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Businesses are started to build a life.
The thoughts of a strategic thinker are holistic. This means they prefer to look end-to-end rather than piecemeal. Two questions are prominent for strategy-oriented individuals: “What are we doing or trying to achieve?” and “Where are we headed or going with what we are doing?” Formulating the answer to these questions regarding the view of one’s future (a.k.a. the vision) results in a strategy.
At some point of growth in our journey of pursuit, we can expect to be asked for a written plan. We are often asked for a business plan that captures a company’s vision, industry context, operating environments, and financial/human resources. All of which are then underpinned by strategies and tactics. Rarely are we asked for a life plan. Developing a business plan requires thought, knowledge, research, and calculations. Ironically, developing a life plan is no different, yet it seems to hold less overall value at the community level.
In my mentorship sessions, I focus on being action-oriented and having a life strategy. A life strategy aims to get to a comprehensive plan that will consider personal and professional constructs and intentions. A business strategy only targets the commercial enterprise and its operational components, creating separation based on traditional and, what I believe to be, flawed thinking. It would be a tragedy if your professional pursuits did not fundamentally leverage your superpowers and did not align with who you are and what you are about. A life strategy still supports structure and provides discipline in conduct, if it exists. Unifying one’s personal and professional journeys ensures your points of achievement are better targeted to have a heightened sense of fulfillment as an outcome. You see, a well-built, holistic plan can achieve sustained happiness for you as a whole, which includes personal and professional desires.
A strategy designs your way forward towards achieving something you are aiming for. A great strategy provides an advantage. Advantage can be derived in many ways through varying maneuvers. A recognizable demand is to have an advantage over your competitors. Strategies that present significant advantages could lead to market erosion for competitors and market dominance for you. That is a business perspective – or is it? Advantages can factor into other areas of our life if our points of reference are expanded to look at our surroundings and circumstances differently.
Whether the strategy is one for your life or one for the professional aspects of your life, it nonetheless represents an achievement of a plan-to-action. Strategies lead to roadmaps, which are visual representations of the plan-to-action. Action planning with one person considered is complex. The degree of complexity expands with each person that gets added onto the list for consideration. The mere fact that strategy or strategic planning can become complex deters many from adopting a personal strategy, let alone a comprehensive life one. Yet, many of us want to achieve as much as we can in our life. Many of us want to be seen and heard. Is that desire for recognition, not a factor in gaining enough of an advantage to be noticed? The Tom Hanks movie Greyhound touches on all these aspects of strategy: leveraging who you are, the complexities when considering the many involved, and working for advantage and market dominance.
However, what has not been realized is that there is a cost to not having a strategy or having one only focused on a single area, such as business. The cost is YOU. Remember, you pursue professional or career endeavors to build a life, usually one of substance. Building your life out in fragmented pieces leads to gaps, with some being pretty darn wide, and they usually lead you to a point of unfulfillment. With the mid-point resulting question being “how did I get here?”
It is possible to have everything you desire, but there are many things you need to do to reap that possibility. One way, and from the very start, is to strategically align your every desire with everything about you and merge those into a comprehensive life plan supported by great strategy and tactics. Here’s the beauty in doing that, irrespective of any complexities. When your banker asks for your business plan, you get to simply pull out the relevant sections and say: “here you go.” When a family member asks what you plan to do with your life, again, you simply pull out the relevant sections and say: ”here you go.” If your partner ever suggests that there is a disconnect occurring in the relationship or you seem to be headed in different directions, then pull out the relevant sections and… Well, you get the point.
Bottom line: stay connected, stay true to who you are, and don’t just plan the strategic paths of your business. Plan the paths for your life that include your business because that is the right plan-to-action to go after.
