Diagnosis – the key to a sharp strategy

If you want a sharp strategy, you must diagnose your current situation well. The best strategies I see  are the ones that are elegant in their diagnosis of their current situation. Without a shared, tight, description of the challenges and opportunities you are facing, you will founder in trying to work out what to do.

This term – diagnosis – comes from Richard Rumlet’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, which I’m currently listening to. It’s one of the most elegant ways of naming what I’ve seen in practice for the last ten years. Diagnosing your current strategic situation implies:

• Identifying what’s significant in your environment and within your organisation
• Articulating the implications of what’s significant
• Naming your relative strengths and weaknesses
• And so, putting yourself in the position to precisely name the challenges your strategy must address for the next few years.