My first job out of university was at a mid-size strategy consulting firm in London, where I spent two years. Understandably, the most common question I was asked by my family and friends was: what do you actually do? I’d usually attempt to answer by describing the tasks that made up my day – writing notes for expert interviews, doing competitor research, market modelling, etc. But I felt like I was always circling around the question, never able to truly answer it. 

With a bit of time and distance, I think I’ve finally been able to articulate a good answer – strategy is making good decisions happen.

Each of these words is important, and I’ll take them in turn.

Good

The first part of strategy work is defining what ‘good’ means for a company. This typically involves articulating a ‘vision’ or ‘mission’ – a statement that captures the essence of what the company is trying to achieve. A ’north star’ that everyone’s efforts should be in service of.

For Google it is to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. For Costco it is to “continually provide our members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices”. For SpaceX it is to “make humanity multiplanetary”.

Missions matter because alignment matters. A cart doesn’t move if all its horses are pulling in different directions. A clear vision moves everyone in the same direction.

Smaller companies tend to intuitively know their mission. They’re usually focused on only a single thing. There are few enough employees that the leaders of the company, who often have a clear sense of the mission, can communicate it easily. 

The problem of misalignment usually arises in mid-size and large companies. They expand out of their core business and lose focus. There are many different teams, all with different incentives and measures of success. This is when strategy teams (or consultants) are most useful. They help define ‘good’ and align everyone under a shared mission. 

Companies make shoes, not money

A common pushback to the above is to question why inventing a mission is necessary in the first place. It stems from a fundamental misconception that the purpose of all companies is to create shareholder value.

But this is a classic case of mistaking the measure of success for success itself. Or as Peter Drucker put it, “Companies make shoes, not money”. Share price is the measure of ‘good’; it is not the goal in itself. And as Goodhart famously pointed out, bad things happen when your metric of success becomes the success itself.

Decisions

Once you know what ‘good’ is and there is a common north star that everyone is working towards, the next question is how do you actually get there. What are the specific, ‘good decisions’ that need to be made to move towards this north star?

This part makes up the bulk of work that strategy teams (or consultants) do. Let’s take Costco as an example, whose mission is to “continually provide our members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices”. A ‘strategic pillar’ that supports this mission may be something along the lines of “Operational Efficiency to Lower Prices” – supporting the mission by reducing costs so Costco can pass savings to customers. A specific project under that pillar could be to implement an automated inventory management system across all warehouses. This translates to specific actions each team needs to take – IT to select inventory management software and integrate it, Finance to model the ROI of the project, Procurement to work with vendors to ensure software compatibility, HR to develop new training materials, …

The ‘work’ for strategy teams at this stage is to ’ladder down’ from the north star. To identify the key pillars that support it, determine the most important projects in service of those pillars, and translate that to specific decisions that each team needs to make.

Happen

Now that you know the specific decisions that need to be made, you need to make it happen. This is where some people draw the line between ‘strategy’ and ‘implementation’ – the ‘planning’ vs the ‘doing’.

The funny part of being in a strategy team (or a consultant) is that often you actually can’t do any of the things you’re recommending. Sometimes you may not have the ability to do it, but more often than not, the actual doing is under someone else’s’ remit, and you’re not allowed to do. 

The job at this stage is all about ‘project management’ and ‘influencing’. You need to weave your findings into a compelling story to get executives on board with the plan you’re proposing. To convince other people to prioritise the work you’re asking them to do. This can often be very difficult, and someone who is great at this specific skill is invaluable.

Despite the work being less ‘glamorous’, this is by far the most important part. If no one actually listens to your recommendations, your ‘amazing strategy’ is worthless. At the end of the day, nothing will have actually happened. Strategy is only ever as important as the execution that follows it.

Messy reality

The above is a very ‘pure’ expression of strategy – in reality strategy is a term used loosely and with little precision. 

Consulting firms often branch out to do whatever work the client asks of them, even if it’s not ‘strategy’ work. Internal strategy teams will often pick up the projects that aren’t clearly in any other teams remit, like exploring new markets to enter or companies to buy. They kickstart others’ projects by creating little MVPs to get things moving, and generally just do the random glue work required to make these good decisions ‘happen’.

This messiness is part of why strategy is hard to articulate in the first place. But ultimately, I think ‘making good decisions happen’ sums it up well.