Simplify Your Strategy in 4 Research-Backed Steps

To Simplify Your Strategy Requires Ruthless Focus and Hard Choices
Strategy becomes powerful the moment you decide what not to do. Without focus, priorities multiply, complexity creeps in, and execution stalls. If your core strategic priorities exceed three or four, or if they cannot be articulated in 12 words or fewer, clarity suffers. And when clarity suffers, so do:

• Strategic alignment.
• Strategic belief.
• Strategic follow-through.

Organizational culture assessment research shows that teams rarely struggle with effort — they struggle with overload and misalignment. When everything is labeled “strategic,” nothing truly is. Leaders often confuse comprehensiveness with rigor. In reality, discipline is the differentiator. A focused strategy:

• Sharpens decisions.
• Accelerates trade-offs.
• Channels energy where it matters most.

We have found that the most aligned executive teams can describe their strategy simply, succinctly, and consistently. If people cannot repeat it, they cannot execute it. That is why we often insist that an entire corporate strategy fit on a single page as the central output of a strategy retreat. When leaders are forced to distill their intent onto one page, assumptions are shared, priorities are clear, and tough choices are explicit.

If you want execution to improve, simplify your strategy. Decide what matters most. Eliminate what does not. Then state your priorities clearly enough that every employee can understand where to focus their time, talent, and attention.

Strategic Complexity Creates Strategic Failure
Research from IBM found that fewer than 10% of well-formulated strategies are successfully executed. The problem is not intelligence — it is clarity and alignment.

Our organizational alignment research found that employees rate their company’s strategy as about 50% less clear than executives believe it to be. Even executive teams often report weak alignment among themselves. If leaders are not unified and crystal clear, the rest of the organization will struggle to execute.

Complexity is the culprit. When priorities multiply and objectives pile up, focus fades. People cannot execute what they cannot clearly understand. If your strategy cannot be stated simply and succinctly, it will not guide behavior consistently.

Key Warning Signs that You Need to Simplify Your Strategy

Here are the top red flags that your strategy is not simple enough to succeed:

• People consistently ask for more clarifying information before they act.
• Key constituents do not agree on major priorities, resources, funding, or timing.
• The plan is not being executed consistently throughout the organization.
• Decision making is slow, frustrating, or ineffective.

How to Simplify Your Strategy to Close the Gap
When you want to close the gap that exists in 9 out of 10 companies between strategy design and strategy execution, you need to avoid complex schemes and follow a few simple rules for strategy.

1. Be Ruthlessly Selective
   Strategy is about making difficult choices about what matters most. Narrow down your major optimizing strategies to the vital three or four that will truly make a difference. Then prioritize the critical few goals and actions within each to reduce alternatives, increase focus, and decrease confusion.
2. Make It Implementable in Your Culture
   Don’t try to put a “square peg strategy” through your “round hole culture.” Analyze the history of the organization to determine what has worked and what has not worked in the past. This is not the time to rely on wild guesses but on quantifiable cultural assessments and objective observations.

   Do not underestimate the importance of strategy-culture alignment.  Strategies must go through culture and people to get successfully implemented.

3. Actively Put Managers and Their Teams in Charge
   When the key stakeholders are actively involved in strategic planning and empowered to define and achieve team goals, you add real-world experience and increase strategic buy-in and commitment. Much can be learned from those who have to “do the work.”  Empower manages and their teams to tweak and evolve the path to achieve your goals.
4. State Specific Goals Simply
   Once you have identified the priorities that matter, articulate goals in a way that can be easily understood by everyone. Summiting Mount Everest is a clear goal.  Getting $150m in new revenue is a clear goal.  You know clarity when you see it.

   If you can explain it to someone outside of your company and they understand it immediately, you are on the right track.

The Bottom Line
To simplify your strategy you must focus and make tough choices.  Not all things are of equal importance or value.  The better you can simplify your strategic priorities, the clearer your work force will be about how to make it happen.

To learn more about how to simplify strategy, download 3 Big Mistakes to Avoid When Cascading Your Corporate Strategy

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.