How to Clarify the Role of Business Strategy

"Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point." – Henry Mintzberg Developing a strategy is about creating a clear, actionable roadmap to achieve your most critical goals. It’s not just about what you want to accomplish, but how you’ll get there. Great strategies are focused, adaptable, and grounded in reality. They turn vision into execution and effort into results. Here’s how to develop a winning strategy: 1. Define the End Goal Start with the outcome in mind. What does success look like? Be clear, specific, and measurable. A powerful strategy is built around a compelling goal that aligns with your overall vision. Ask: * What are we trying to achieve, and why does it matter? * How will we know we’ve succeeded? 2. Assess Your Current Reality You need to know where you are to chart the path to where you want to go. Take an honest look at your current situation, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Ask: * What resources, skills, and assets do we already have? * What challenges or gaps must we address to move forward? 3. Identify the Key Levers Not everything matters equally. Strategy is about focusing on the critical few actions or decisions that will make the biggest impact. Ask: * What are the 2–3 priorities that will move the needle? * What must we focus on to achieve the greatest return on effort? 4. Anticipate Obstacles Great strategies are proactive. Identify potential roadblocks or risks in advance, and build contingency plans to address them. Ask: * What could get in the way of success? * How can we mitigate these risks or turn them into opportunities? 5. Create an Action Plan A strategy without execution is just a wish. Break your strategy into clear, actionable steps with defined roles, responsibilities, and timelines. Ask: * Who is responsible for what? * What milestones will keep us on track? 6. Measure and Adjust No strategy survives unchanged. Build systems to regularly monitor progress, gather feedback, and adapt as needed. Agility ensures your strategy stays relevant. Ask: * How will we track progress and measure success? * What feedback loops will help us adjust along the way? 7. Communicate Relentlessly A strategy must be understood to be executed. Clearly communicate the goal, the priorities, and the plan to everyone involved. People need to know how their actions connect to the bigger picture. A great strategy doesn’t try to do everything—it prioritizes the right things. It bridges the gap between where you are and where you want to go, providing focus, clarity, and momentum. Ask yourself: What’s the bold move that will drive the greatest impact? Build your strategy around it, take decisive action, and stay committed. Remember: a clear strategy is the first step to extraordinary results.

Strategy vs. Planning :: The Compass vs. The Map In business, the terms "strategy" and "planning" are often thrown around interchangeably. But they are not the same. Think of your business plan as the road map. It lays out the steps, milestones, and resources you’ll need to reach your destination. It’s all about execution and ensuring you cover the necessary ground. But what happens if you don’t know which direction to head in? That’s where strategy comes in. Strategy is your compass - your true north. It guides you through the tough decisions, telling you - where to go, why to choose a given direction, and how to get there; especially when the path isn’t clear. Strategy answers the why, what, how, and your right to win. It is defined based on your business goals. Planning is a breakdown of tasks with timeline, people responsible for the same, resource allocation, and risk management. You cannot do planning without a strategy. But at times, we all do. I have done it for years! This leads to a lot of hard work, chaos, but very little outcome. Because you might be doing a lot, but the wrong things. Strategy is difficult, because it involves making difficult choices. You need to say "no" to lots of things and "yes" to a very few things. The big question haunts us - What if I choose the wrong direction? And this leads to indecision. Indecision can kill a business. You need a lot of data and exposure to be able to make the right choices. Against popular belief, these are not created in boardrooms referring to nice presentations. They’re shaped by real-world engagement, asking questions, piloting ideas, and learning from the market. By staying attuned to the needs of your customers and the realities of your industry, you ensure that your strategy remains relevant and powerful. So, the next time you’re setting out to achieve your business goals, remember: Don’t mistake your map for your compass. A clear, well-defined strategy will guide every step you take, by showing you the direction, ensuring you stay on the right path, no matter how complex the journey. In Indus Net Technologies (INT.) we took conscious choice to focus on regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, because they are risk averse, and hence 🫴 us higher stickiness. It aligns with our core strengths of sustainability. We made another choice way back in 2012 to invest heavily in Indian Enterprises, which paid off. To grow this market, and build enterprise capability in the process, we said "no" to several global opportunities. Today this has given us the ability to consult and drive results for large enterprises, which is helping us land large, retained, multi-year contracts. When you make a choice - you lose something, you gain something. There is no right answer. Please share examples of difficult strategic choices that you have made, and inspire us!

Business strategy is, usually, about building better businesses. Companies sometimes rely on committees and marketing experts to develop mission statements and elaborate plans, spending millions and months on research to create a polished growth strategy. In a turnaround (and I would argue in all businesses), time and resources are limited. You don’t have the luxury of waiting months to develop a plan, and speed becomes your greatest competitive advantage. You need clarity, alignment, and fast execution. Moreover, a strategy has to inspire and be distinctively unique to your company and situation. If we go back to basics, strategy is about understanding the choices in front of you – what to do and what not to do – then allocating resources to the activities that will most likely achieve the outcome you want. What I’ve learned in my career is: strategy doesn’t need to be complex; it needs to be based in fact, it needs to be clear and it must be translated in to definitive resource allocation. It needs to be designed for your employees, and your board. Simple, distinctive and clear nearly always beats complex, generic and vague. At Frontier our purpose is to Build Gigabit America and we distilled our strategy down to four fundamentals: 1. Build fiber 2. Sell fiber 3. Improve customer service 4. Operate more efficiently That’s it – four things that our company must do every day to succeed. The simplicity of it made sure everyone, from leadership to the front lines, understood how their work contributed to our bigger goal. What to do, and as importantly, what not to do. And because we are all aligned, we have moved fast. In under four years, we have gone from a company that had never built a strand of fiber to becoming the largest pure-play fiber internet provider in the United States. The lesson: A complex strategy won’t guarantee success. A purpose that inspires and a simple strategy, clearly communicated and relentlessly executed, just might.

Most founders can’t decipher between what’s a decision they should care about or not. And a lot of founders have strong opinions and feelings about everything, and they haven’t learned how to prioritize them in a systematic way. At Clarify, we use a model to help untangle this problem: The Root → Trunk → Branch → Leaf decision making analogy that was popularized by Susan Scott. (1) Root = Critical decisions. If you get these wrong, the company might not survive. They affect the health of the entire business. Examples: co-founder alignment, executive hires, company mission, business model. (2) Trunk = Structural decisions. These shape how the company operates, but don’t threaten its existence. Examples: org design, major platform choices, strategic partnerships. 3) Branch = Tactical decisions. They matter, but they’re reversible or only impact part of the org. Examples: feature prioritization, team OKRs, internal processes. (4) Leaf = Low-stakes, low-impact. Most decisions fall here, and founders shouldn’t be sweating them. Examples: copy on a landing page, color of a button, meeting length. You need to be okay letting others make decisions that affect twigs and branches. You need to focus on hiring great people and giving them autonomy to make those decisions because ultimately they're reversible decisions. They're not one way doors. The tree will survive if a leaf falls off. As a founder, you should focus your time on the roots and trunk. Even if it’s hard to let go, you need to delegate ownership of areas you used to run personally. You need to let go of decisions that don’t require your input. And you need to trust others to care for what you built, sometimes even better than you could. If you truly want to scale, you have to let go of the branches and leaves. That means: letting your design lead choose the button color, trusting your PM to prioritize the next two sprints. empowering your ops lead to change internal processes. The tree won’t die if a leaf falls off. Many founders think everything is a root/trunk level decision when its not. They are fooling themselves into believing they have to be involved, when in reality they are just having trouble letting go.

Leaders, your team doesn’t lack strategy. They lack clarity. You’ve got the presentations.  The KPIs.  The quarterly roadmaps. Everyone is busy. Everyone is working hard. But let’s be honest— Why does it still feel like you’re running on a hamster wheel? Because without clarity, strategy is just noise. This powerful visual by Aman Sahota exposes the 5 brutal signs that you don’t have a strategy problem—you have a clarity problem. 1. Busy… but leading nowhere. Symptom: Endless to-do lists, packed calendars, but no real progress to show. Diagnosis: You’ve confused activity with achievement. Clarity gives direction so tasks stack toward a bigger goal. 2. Hard work… but not together. Symptom: Every department is hitting its own numbers, but silos, duplication, and friction keep surfacing. Diagnosis: You have effort without alignment. Clarity ties roles to one purpose, so the entire team pulls in the same direction. 3. Plans… but no ownership. Symptom: You roll out a shiny new strategy. The team nods politely, then quietly goes back to business as usual. Diagnosis: People don’t commit to what they don’t connect with. Clarity makes them see their personal role in the bigger mission. 4. Pivots… but no grounding. Symptom: Every competitor move or market shift sends the team into panic mode and sudden re-direction. Diagnosis: You’re missing a North Star. Clarity anchors you in vision + values, so pivots become smart adjustments, not chaos. 5. Ambition… but no definition of enough. Symptom: Every target you hit feels empty because the goalpost immediately moves again. Diagnosis: You’re chasing “more” without defining “better.” Clarity sets a meaningful end-state so growth feels fulfilling, not endless. Strategy tells you how to climb the mountain. Clarity ensures you’re climbing the right one. Before you chase another big initiative, pause and ask: 👉 What is the single most important thing we must achieve? 👉 Why does it matter? 👉 What does success really look like? That’s where true progress begins. Your Turn → Which of these 5 clarity gaps do you see most in your workplace? #Leadership #Clarity #Strategy #BusinessGrowth #Management #TeamAlignment #FutureOfWork #MumbaiBusiness #PuneBusiness

A surprise moment for one of my clients Last month, a client shared that he had just hosted a successful year-end team workshop. The 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀 was that they were all aligned related to the behaviors he had been trying to instill from a cultural perspective. The 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀 was that they were not all aligned on the business strategy and how it could and should be executed. Sometimes, we assume everyone is on board and fully understands the strategy, so we keep going. If we don’t check the understanding, we may miss the fact that the team may all think it is different from what you, as the leader, plan. 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀: ✔️ Communicate your strategy and related actions 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁: Say it once and assume everyone understands. 𝗗𝗼: Say it many times and in different ways. ✔️Check for understanding 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁: do you have any questions? 𝗗𝗼: What will it take for this to work? What will prevent it from working as planned? If you want and need your team fully able to drive your strategy successfully, you need them to understand and identify a clear path for execution. How clear is your team on your strategy and their roles in executing it? Photo by Marco Meyer on Unsplash

"Hey Jim, what's ISN's strategy?" 🤔 That question from Intuit's founder was a turning point in my career. It forced me to confront a fundamental truth... Strategy isn't just a plan – it's a set of choices that determine your company's future. Here's a simplified framework I've used to define strategy at companies like Netflix and Intuit: 👉Strategy = Choices: Decide WHERE to play (which customers to target) and HOW to win with those customers. 👉Planning = Decisions: Once you have a strategy, THEN you make specific decisions to execute it. 👉Document & Test: Write down your strategic logic and test it regularly. Are your assumptions about the market and your customers still valid? Remember, strategy is about making bets, not finding a perfect solution. Be bold, be decisive, and don't be afraid to course-correct along the way. If you're interested in learning more about this framework and strategic decision-making, head over to https://lnkd.in/gzwxJtuJ to read my full blog post. #strategy #leadership #business #CFO