“Strategy is not planning — it is the making of an integrated set of choices that collectively position the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage relative to competition and deliver superior financial returns. I find that once this is made clear to line managers they recognize that strategy is not just fancily-worded budgeting and they get much more interested in it.
Obviously, you can’t execute a strategy without initiatives, investments, and budgeting. But what you need to get managers focused on before you start on those things is the strategy that will make these initiatives coherent.
That strategy is a singular thing; there is one strategy for a given business — not a set of strategies. It is one integrated set of choices: what is our winning aspiration; where will we play; how will we win; what capabilities need to be in place; and what management systems must be instituted?
That strategy tells you what initiatives actually make sense and are likely to produce the result you actually want. Such a strategy actually makes planning easy.” Roger Martin
https://hbr.org/2013/02/dont-let-strategy-become-plann
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2013/11/02/why-a-strategy-is-not-a-plan
https://hbr.org/2014/01/the-big-lie-of-strategic-planning
https://hbr.org/2018/04/your-strategic-plans-probably-arent-strategic-or-even-plans
