Ask most business owners if they have a strategy, and the answer is yes.
Ask to see it, and the conversation gets more interesting.
Sometimes it’s a document prepared for a bank loan three years ago that hasn’t been opened since. Sometimes it’s a set of slides from a team away day that everyone agreed was really valuable at the time, but never quite translated into any change in how the business was actually run. Sometimes there’s a knowing smile and an admission that it’s “in the pipeline.”
None of this is a criticism. Running a growing business is demanding in ways that are genuinely hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t done it. The strategy gets deprioritised because the business needs you today, right now, in the room – and the strategy can always wait until next month.
The problem is that next month comes around looking exactly like this month, and the strategy keeps waiting.
What a strategy that isn’t working actually costs
The cost of a dormant strategy isn’t always visible on a P&L. It shows up in subtler ways.
It shows up in decisions that take too long because there’s no clear framework to test them against. It shows up in a leadership team that is working hard but not always pulling in the same direction. It shows up in marketing activity that feels scattered, in hiring decisions that don’t quite fit, in service lines that continue because they’ve always been there rather than because they’re the right thing to be doing.
It shows up, most commonly of all, in a business owner who is busier than ever but somehow doesn’t feel like they’re getting anywhere.
That gap between activity and progress is almost always a strategy gap.
What makes a strategy actually work
In our experience, the strategies that genuinely drive businesses forward share a few characteristics that are worth understanding.
They are specific rather than aspirational. “We want to grow” is not a strategy. “We want to reach £3m turnover by the end of next year by deepening relationships with our top twenty clients and adding two new enterprise accounts per quarter” is a strategy – it’s testable, it’s time-bound, and it tells you what to do and what not to do.
They are owned by the whole leadership team, not just the founder. A strategy that lives in one person’s head is fragile. A strategy that the whole team has been involved in building is something they’ll protect, pursue, and hold each other accountable to.
They are reviewed regularly. A strategy that is set in January and revisited in December is not driving the business – it’s decorating the office wall. The businesses we work with that grow most consistently are the ones with a simple quarterly rhythm: review what’s happened, understand what’s changed, and agree on what the next ninety days are for.
They are connected to real decisions. The test of a good strategy is whether it makes decisions easier. When a new opportunity comes in, can you quickly and confidently assess whether it fits where the business is going? If not, the strategy isn’t doing its job.
A simple starting point
If you want to test the health of your current strategy, try this exercise with your leadership team.
Ask everyone, independently and without discussing it first, to write down the three biggest priorities for the business over the next twelve months. Then compare the answers.
If they’re aligned, you’re in good shape. If they’re different — even subtly different — you’ve found the gap. And that gap, left unaddressed, will quietly undermine almost everything else you try to do.
Getting aligned doesn’t require a lengthy process or a complex framework. It requires honesty, the right facilitation, and enough protected time to think clearly rather than just react.
If your strategy is sitting in a drawer somewhere and you’d like to change that, we’d be glad to help. Book a free discovery call at justelle.co.uk or call Jo on 07843 428711.
