MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How to Develop Strategy for Execution

Effective strategic guidelines get three things right. They link to the corporate vision, identify critical vulnerabilities, and focus on what matters most.

Strategy is not about choice, it’s about choices. Few companies succeed based on a single big bet. They win through a series of trade-offs — about target customers, product, scope, and resources — that reinforce one another to create value. Attempting to describe every important choice in detail, however, leads to information overload. Any strategy that tries to address every decision that matters will be far too complex to communicate, remember, or use as a guide for day-to-day action. In strategy development, complexity is unavoidable. But when it comes to execution, complexity kills.

To implement their strategy, many companies commit to a handful of company-wide objectives that clarify the choices that will matter most over the next few years. These strategic priorities serve as guardrails to keep different parts of the organization moving in the same direction. They are a common tool to execute strategy, particularly among large companies.

About the Author

Donald Sull, who tweets @simple_rules, is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Stefano Turconi is a teaching fellow at the London Business School. Charles Sull is a partner and James Yoder is chief data scientist at Charles Thames Strategy Partners LLC.

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