Strategy Isn't Planning It's Diagnosis

Richard Rumelt defines strategy clearly: it's not a wish list. It's a response to a specific challenge.

Most "strategies" I see are just goals. "We want to scale to 10M users." That's not strategy. That's a fantasy.

Strategy is: "We can scale to 10M users by focusing on enterprise customers, because competitors are ignoring them. This requires building a sales team. We'll hire by Q2."

Notice the difference? The second one has diagnosis. It identifies the problem. It explains why this solution works.

Rumelt calls bad strategy "fluff." It sounds strategic but is empty. "We'll leverage synergies" or "We'll be customer-centric." Everyone says this.

Real strategy makes tradeoffs. When Vestcodes decided to focus on developers over enterprises, that was strategic. It meant saying no to revenue opportunities.

Strategy is what you don't do as much as what you do.

At Actimi, we had a moment where we could expand the product into ten directions. The strategic choice wasn't picking the best direction. It was recognizing the core challenge: "We need to prove product-market fit first. Every other direction dilutes that. So we do one thing, excellently."

That sounds obvious now. It wasn't at the time.

Strategy is hard because it requires saying no to good opportunities. But without that focus, you have no strategy. Just wishes.