Strategy is a concept that I love, but at the same time it really bugs me. It's a seemingly simple idea (we all have an intuitive sense of what being strategic is), and we have all talked it to death when it comes to organizations and strategic planning, yet for the most part, to be honest, I think we suck at it. I'm not convinced that randomly choosing directions wouldn't produce results at the same level as our "planned" efforts (I think Mintzberg has research to that effect. If anyone has a citation for that, let me know). How is that possible?

Maybe it goes back to why we are doing strategy in the first place. Why have a strategy? Because we want results, right? So what do we mean by results?

Growth.

We want growth in our organizations and our bottom line. We want to get ahead. We want to have more than we did last year. We want more attendees, more members, more customers, more revenue, more legislation in our favor passed, more victories, more acquisitions, more market share, more page views, more likes, more profit, more units…. If you're sensing that I'm coming from a "we shouldn't be so greedy" perspective, then I imagine you'll counter with "Yes, but we don't want more in and of itself. More gives us more resources with which we can make a difference to our constituents, or grow the economy which provides jobs, etc."

I know. But think back to the systems thinking post I just wrote. Maybe in going after what we want, we're creating things we don't actually want, and don't see it yet.

In comes Umair Haque with a post about strategy on the Harvard Business Review blog. He's writing about the failure of the Pontiac automobile brand. In the post, he suggests the following alternative strategic foci for Pontiac:

• Depth
• Purpose
• Community
• People
• Beauty 

When I look at my own life, these things really matter to me. I have made major strategic moves in my life based on those things, even to the chagrin of people close to me who didn't understand my choices at the time. So is it a coincidence that I've done well by standard "metrics" of income and "stuff" that I can afford or observable quality of life? Or are my "results" based on the more surface level strategic choices I've made, like picking the right field of study, or networking with the right people, or negotiating for better salaries, etc.? Or is it a fallacy to think there is a cause and effect here?

There is certainly no simple cause and effect. But I am beginning to think that the five things Haque identifies have become more important for organizations, and will continue to grow in importance, maybe even rapidly. They have always been important to humans, and I think we've hit a place in history where organizations need to be more human in order to make our way out of this mess we're in. I am sure we will continue to pay attention to strategic issues like cost of production, market segmentation, brand awareness, and six sigma quality initiatives, but if we only focus on the things that generate growth, we may just go the way of Pontiac, as Haque suggests.