Creating a good strategy on a page: do's and don'ts

A strategy on a page is one sheet that records the choices a business has made. It states the problem the business is solving and what it wants to become. It says where the business will compete and where it will not, why customers will choose it, and the few things it will do first.

The page works when it records choices already made. It fails when it stands in for making them. Most one-page strategies fail the same way. A vision sits at the top, five goals in the middle, a list of initiatives at the bottom, and nobody chose anything in between.

The page is not the strategy. The choices are. But the page is the best test of whether the choices exist. A strategy that cannot be written on one sheet usually has not been made. This page sets out what belongs on it, what does not, and how to tell a good one from a well-formatted bad one.

What belongs on the page

A good page has five bands, and the order matters.

1. The diagnosis. Two or three sentences on the situation: the issues that determine the business's future. The problem comes here, ahead of the market size and the vision. A page that opens with ambition and skips the situation is the most common failure in strategy documents.

Observable example: "Our two largest customers are consolidating their supplier lists. Our cost per unit is above the two importers we lose to on price. Our service business is the only part of the company growing." Those sentences are a diagnosis. "Become the partner of choice in our sector" is not.

2. The vision or aspiration. What the business wants to become in three to five years, with a number attached. A vivid one-sentence description and one or two targets.

3. Where we compete, and where we don't. The segments, channels and geographies the business has chosen. This band must also name what has been ruled out.

If every market and product from the last decade is still on the page, it is an inventory. Nobody has chosen. How to make this choice is a page of its own.

4. How we win. One sentence on why customers in those segments choose you, in words a competitor could not also say. "Service and relationships" fails that test. "The only supplier with stock in every state, so a trade customer never waits" passes it. What counts as an advantage is also a page of its own.

5. The few things we will do. Three to five strategic themes, each with its first concrete step, an owner and a date. Fifteen initiatives is too many, and so is one per department. The themes should follow from bands three and four so visibly that a reader could guess them. How to shape the initiative portfolio is the fourth page in this set.

The page ends there. Everything else belongs in the plan behind the page: the market analysis, the options considered and rejected, the financial model, the risks. The page holds the choices. The plan holds the evidence for them.

The do's

Write the diagnosis first, before anything else on the page. Write the bands in their order. A team that starts with the aspiration will produce goals. A team that starts with the situation will produce choices.

This takes weeks of work. The discipline matters more than the layout.

Make the where and the how fit each other. In the strongest strategies, the choice of where to compete and the reason you win reinforce one another. Picture a premium service advantage in a segment that buys on price. Those are two true statements that contradict each other, and they make no strategy.

Include the line that says what you will not do. This line is one of the most telling on the page, and the one most often missing. If it is hard to write, that is the point.

Give every theme a first step, an owner and a date. A theme without a first step is a slogan. The later steps can be a roadmap, because the view changes after each step. But step one must be ready to sign off.

Test it against four questions. Is it genuine? Were real options considered, were trade-offs made, are resources focused on the choices? Is it sound? Was the logic tested against facts, including facts competitors do not have?

Can it be acted on? Will it turn into plans the business can deliver in the time available? Is it compelling? Is the leadership team committed to it outside the room as well as in it?

Retell it without the page. Ask five leaders to write the strategy down from memory. If the five versions differ, the page has not done its job, however good it looks. If they match, you have a strategy that people can use.

Date it, version it, and reopen the budget against it. Sometimes the page changes while the budget stays at last year's plus inflation. That page has not met the business yet. The most observable difference between a strategy and a document is money and people following the choices.

The don'ts

Don't put six goals on the page because nobody could choose between them. A page with six equal priorities has zero priorities. The planning process is often designed to produce consensus and avoid forcing choices. Resist it.

Don't mistake a vision statement for a strategy. "To be the leading provider of X" is an aspiration at best. It answers none of the questions on the page: what problem, which customers, why us, what first.

Don't write a how-to-win that everyone in your industry could also write. Could your nearest competitor put your page on their wall without changing a word? Then it describes the industry, and it is no strategy.

Don't give every function a theme. A theme per department is the sign of a strategy assembled from budget requests. Themes should cut across the business, and some functions should have nothing on the page.

Don't list fifteen initiatives. Picture dozens of initiatives, several contradicting, none clearly strategic. That picture is the most common shape of a business with a plan and no strategy. Cut the list to the vital few and publish what was cut.

Don't rely on pictures. Arrows, pillars, a house, a temple: the graphic does not matter. It often hides that no thread runs from the diagnosis to the actions. If the page reads as well as plain text, it is a strategy. If it only works as a diagram, be suspicious.

Don't use language that would not survive being read aloud. Jargon on a strategy page usually covers for a missing choice. "Leverage our capabilities to drive synergies" says nothing. "Close the two smaller plants and run the large one at capacity" says something.

Don't file it after the offsite. A page nobody reopens for a year is a record of a meeting. The page should sit on the table at every strategy review, with a date on it. It should change when the facts change.

The five stages of stating a strategy

Whether the strategy can be stated is one of the practices in the strategy-clarity dimension of a Stages of Excellence strategy assessment. The five stages read:

• Lagging: Ask five leaders what the strategy is and you get five different slogans.
• Basic: A strategy document exists from the last planning cycle; almost nobody could summarise it.
• Competent: The strategy fits on a page and leaders retell it consistently: where we compete, how we win, what we'll do.
• Advanced: The one-page strategy cascades and every function can say what it means for them.
• Leading: The strategy is so clearly held that people use it daily to make decisions without asking.

Most businesses with a strategy document are at the second stage. The move to the third is the page described above. It usually takes the top team a few weeks, with no outside help.

Frequently asked questions

How long should it take to write? Weeks. The page is the last thing you write, after the diagnosis, the options and the choices. If the page is taking months, the team is avoiding the choosing. The writing is the easy part.

Is a strategy on a page the same as a strategic plan? No. The page holds the choices and their logic.

The plan is the detail behind them: the analysis, the options rejected and why, the financials, the operating changes, the initiative plans and the targets. A good plan has a good page at the front. A good page without a plan behind it is a poster.

Should a group with several businesses have one page or several? One per level. The group page makes the portfolio choices: which businesses, how much investment each, what the centre adds. Each business unit has its own page, and each unit page should nest visibly under the group's. If a unit's page could belong to any parent, the group has not made its choices.

Is there a template? Any layout that carries the five bands above will do. The value lies in the choices on it and the process that keeps them alive.

If you cannot fill the how-to-win band honestly, leave it blank. Do not write "service and relationships". The blank is the most useful thing the exercise has produced.

• Does your strategy fit on a page? Take the check.
• The Stages of Excellence in strategy
• Strategy as a hessian sack of initiatives