Strategy consulting has a golden aura.

Strategy consulting has a glow, a mystique, and definitely prestige for most new entrants to consulting. If we come back to earth for a moment, a strategy is a plan:

• What are you going to do and Why?
• How are you going to do it?
• Who will do what by when and at what cost?

That’s it – just a plan. More specifically strategy is a plan to grow revenue of profit or both in the face of competition or other uncontrollable variables, (like available supply, changing technology, or government regulation). It’s a collection of decisions of actions you will take and, maybe more importantly, actions you will not take.

The word strategy comes from the Greek word, strategos, which means generalship and  military warfare was the first use of the concept. Most people trace the widespread use of the word to Carl Von Clausewitz, the Prussian general who wrote On War describing the strategies of Napoleon and Frederick the Great. Von Clausewitz gives some credit for his observations to an ancient Chinese text  Sun Tzu’s The Art of War written around 500 B.C.. While he never uses the word strategy, Sun Tzu is prescient in concepts easily translatable to business. In one of the most engaging strategic planning projects I ever ran, the leadership team compared Sun Tzu descriptions of battlefields, “Ground. . . death ground. . .downhill and uphill. . . the mud or swamp” to the Michael Porter Five Forces model of Industry structure and the nature of competition. The group went on to find winning niches where they compete even today.

Is business war? Some like the military model and many of those people elevate strategy to its exalted  position. I like to remind those people of the words of one  very successful general Dwight David Eisenhower, commander of Allied Forces in western Europe in World War II (and 34^th President of the United States).

“In preparing for battle, plans are useless, planning is essential.”

This quote speaks to the value of thinking in advance of action, but hints that action “on the ground,” will need to be adapted to changing circumstances.

The Plan

Strategy is still just a plan, what and why, how, who and when. The thinking behind the plan should prepare the business to adapt as needed.

There are a lot of strategic planning frameworks. The consulting firm you work for has one, and you will use it, but here is a generic framework to think about.

Strategy must be based upon information about something new in the environment.  Often when a client decides that they need a new strategy it is usually because they missed the changes in the environment – new customer needs or they didn’t anticipate the competitor response. Sometimes the firm doesn’t notice until revenue drops substantially.

If an expert strategy consultant is brought in, that firm may arrive with much documented evidence of those changes based upon their experience in the industry. Or the strategy firm (content consultant) collects data and analyzes it and delivers recommended actions.

The strategy process consultant may have some experience in the industry, may even have opinions about the best course of action, but works with the firm’s leadership to do the research and analysis. The strategy process consultant may even create an environmental scanning function so that the firm doesn’t get similarly caught flat-footed again. The strategy process consultant often works alongside the client to execute the strategy.

Implementation: Strategy Execution

A McKinsey senior director once said to me, “implementation is the client’s responsibility. We would never usurp our client’s responsibility.” My other favorite quote from a military general is from Brigadier General David Sarnoff who was on Eisenhower’s staff and both before and after te war was the CEO of RCA:

“The ‘B’ quality plan executed in an ‘A’ quality fashion will always beat an ‘A’ quality plan executed in a ‘B’ quality fashion.”

I believe that process consultants have an advantage in strategy execution, but even content consultants can succeed if the client is engaged throughout the project. My first project was a new product feasibility study for a heavy duty truck company in the United Kingdom. The project lead engaged the client in the analysis by conducting weekly updates. By the time the client got the recommendations, “build the eight wheel truck, stay away from distribution box vans, there’s no available premium for “heavy duty,” he was convinced and implemented everything.

My second project was with the same project lead who convinced the client to sponsor a study of the market for automatic transmissions in the bus market in nineteen developing countries. However, the client insisted on a “hands-off approach,”  only attended an abbreviated presentation, may not have opened the detailed report, and never implemented anything, though there were seven of those markets ripe for his firm’s transmissions.

I think that even Newbie consultants in a content firm can help the client execute strategy, if you are on-site ask your project lead to allow some feedback of the analysis you are doing from the people in the client system who would be most likely to act upon it. You will need to approach this delicately as some project leads may feel threatened or worry about “leaking” the answer before the big presentation,  If you get shot down remember the idea for when you are managing projects

Business strategy has progressed in the 1970s from the BCG analytical matrices to the models of Michael Porter of Harvard to the value engineering approach of Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, in Blue Ocean Strategy. There will always be new glitzy frameworks from rock-star B-School professors and big and boutique consulting firms, but strategy is always just a plan and a plan must be implemented to be worth anything.