Strategy is not Planning, Strategy is not Execution, period.
We should use the word Strategy with care, because Strategy is the act of making choices under uncertainty, constraints, and competition.
Its most crucial form is business strategy. If we have a bad business strategy, nothing will save us — not even ‘brilliant execution,’ whatever that is. In most companies, business strategy needs to occur at multiple levels.
It can be very tricky though. It would be much easier for these companies if they had one product line. But they wouldn’t be nearly as large. The price we must pay for the diversity is that each strategy needs to be carefully nested so that each fits with and reinforces the others. That is hard work.
If our company’s business strategy is to “seize every possible sales opportunity“, hence, “ever-changing priorities“, then the tricky thing is that we have to spend time and attention on properly nesting the levels so that they fit with and reinforce each other, such as, for different groups, regions, services, products etc within our company.
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