Strategy Is the Logic of Why We Win
As the strategy definition process for next year begins, and as a current student in the Stanford LEAD program, I find myself reflecting on lessons from Professors William Barnett and Jesper Sørensen in their Strategic Leadership course. One simple definition has stayed with me: strategy is the logic that explains why we might win. This definition took me a while to internalize. For much of my career, the strategy we received looked more like a to-do list: cut costs by 10%, invest more in marketing, grow market share by 10%, add 10 new team members, and close 100 projects by year-end. We were told the what, but rarely the why. When people on the execution side receive only a list of actions, they are forced to connect the dots themselves—and that makes it far more likely they will take steps we never intended. ...