What are the stages of excellence in strategy?

Strategy capability develops through five stages. At the bottom of the scale, a list of goals impersonates a strategy. At the top, choices are sharp enough to be costly, and the organisation turns on evidence before the market forces it.

The stages are assessed across five dimensions: the strategy itself, facts and foresight, advantage, resourcing and commitment, and execution and adaptation.

The most common finding in nearly three decades of strategy reviews: most firms sit one stage left of where their leadership believes they are. The gap is usually in resourcing, not thinking.

The five stages, in strategy terms

• Lagging. The goals ARE the strategy: a revenue target and a percentage. There is no diagnosis and nothing is excluded. The budget is last year's plus inflation.
• Basic. A strategy document exists from the last planning cycle. The top team knows its themes. Two levels down it is rumour, and nothing was ever ruled out.
• Competent. A written diagnosis names the real challenges. Where-to-play and how-to-win choices are explicit. Priorities are visibly resourced. Strategic progress is reviewed separately from monthly operations.
• Advanced. Choices came from a genuine options process. The momentum case, where the current course leads in five years, is written down. Assumptions carry indicators and triggers. Resource allocation is re-argued from the strategy each cycle.
• Leading. People use the strategy daily to make decisions without asking. Exits happen without sentiment. The business holds course under noise and turns early on signal.

The five dimensions a strategy assessment covers

1. The strategy itself: can leaders retell it consistently? Does it face the real challenge? Were real choices made? Do the pieces reinforce each other? Are the goals agreed, and do they stay separate from the strategy?
2. Facts & foresight: market granularity, the business's real economics and where value concentrates, privileged insight, and how trends and uncertainty are handled.
3. Advantage: a named, evidenced source of advantage, where the business can win by segment, capabilities that match the choices, and anticipated competitor response.
4. Resourcing & commitment: do money and people follow the strategy? What shape is the initiative portfolio? Is anything ever stopped? Do choices survive contact?
5. Execution, learning & adaptation: turning strategy into action, how it is communicated and owned, review cadence, watched assumptions, and measures that lead the financials.

How is strategy maturity measured?

Strategy maturity is measured one practice at a time. A Stages of Excellence assessment asks about 23 strategy practices across the five dimensions, and five more for a group of businesses. For each practice, the respondent picks the one of five sentences that describes the business today. The answers roll up into a stage for each dimension.

The archetypes that recur

Score patterns cluster into five types:

• The Dreamers: a well-articulated strategy the budget has never met.
• The Machine Without a Map: disciplined delivery of an undefined direction.
• The Analysts: an excellent fact base admired from a safe distance.
• The Gamblers: bold, committed choices resting on instinct.
• The Drifters: no strategy machinery at all.

Each has a known remedy. A strategy offsite fixes none of them.

The cheapest strategy tool that exists

Before any assessment, write the momentum case. The momentum case is an honest projection of where the current course lands the business in five years if nothing changes. It projects from the last three years' actual trends and ignores the budget.

In our experience it is the fastest way to convert comfort into urgency. Businesses that cannot write it are usually at the bottom of the scale on more dimensions than they expect.

See where your business stands: the strategy check takes about ten minutes.