Sober Evaluation
What happens when your strategy becomes disconnected from reality? Do you hold an urgent workshop? Or is there a better way?
Why open with an image from The Great Beauty? For me, it's one of the best films of the century so far. It opens with the morning after - trying to put ourselves back together, figure out what happened, and find out what it means for us going forward. Doubtless if you watch it you'll walk away with a different interpretation - let me know in the comments.
Context
You have been pursuing a strategy, perhaps the stated company strategy, for some time - months or years. The results are not matching the ambitions. Teams are busy solving urgent problems that are not acknowledged in the strategy. Frustration abounds. Shareholders wonder why progress is not as fast as promised. Engineers wonder why we're not taking the time to clean up the mess.
Discussion
A strategy is a simple thing:
A set of beliefs of leaders at a moment in time about how best to meet the market situation.
Its direction and ambition are calibrated to what those leaders hope is true about the company, the systems, and the world around them. But what if those beliefs are wrong? What if the market has changed? What if the narrative is disconnected from reality?