What a strategy review should cover

A strategy review audits the foundations of the strategy the business already has. It asks whether the strategy can be stated, whether it rests on facts and whether it names a real advantage. It asks whether money and people follow it, and whether anyone would notice if it stopped working.

The review is a negative check. Passing does not prove the strategy is right, but failing almost always proves it is wrong.

Most businesses ask for a review when something feels off. Growth has stalled, a competitor has moved, the board is restless. The usual response is to commission a new strategy, inside or outside, and spend months building one.

A review comes first and costs a fraction of that. It takes weeks. In our experience it usually shows that most of the foundations are sound and one or two are not. The business then has a cheaper problem than the one it thought it had.

What a strategy review is, and is not

A review is not a strategy project. It does not develop options or choose between them. It takes the strategy as written and as practised. Then it tests whether the things a strategy needs underneath it are there.

Done well, it gives three things. How complete the foundations are. Where the weak spots are, and, equally useful, where nothing costly needs fixing. And what each weak spot needs.

The need is rarely a new strategy. Often it is a budget conversation, a fact base or a review rhythm.

Every strategy answers four questions. What does the business want to achieve? Where will it compete, and how? How will the strategy be delivered?

A review covers those four and adds a fifth: does the business learn and adapt as it goes? The five areas below are that list.

Example: A board commissions a review because growth has stalled for three years. The review finds the strategy itself is clear, the diagnosis is right and the advantage is real. What failed is the fourth area.

The budget has been last year's plus inflation since the strategy was written. The two priority segments have never had a named owner. The remedy is a reallocation, and it takes a month. The strategy stands.

1. The strategy itself

The first area tests whether there is a strategy to review. Can it be stated? Does it name the two or three issues that determine the business's future? Or does it open with ambition and skip the situation?

Were real choices made, with something ruled out? Or is it a list of goals: grow revenue, improve margins, delight customers? Do the choices reinforce each other? Or do the initiatives pull in different directions and compete for the same people? And are the goals agreed and owned, or standing in for the strategy?

The fastest test is the retell. Ask five leaders, separately, to write the strategy from memory. Five different slogans is a finding in itself, and a piece of its own.

The second fastest is the not-doing line: what the business has stopped or declined because of the strategy. If the answer is nothing, what is here is a set of goals. Nobody has made the choices.

Example: A manufacturer's strategy document runs to forty pages. Asked for the diagnosis, the executive points to the market-size section. Asked what has been ruled out, there is a pause.

The forty pages contain no problem statement and no exclusions. The review's first finding is that only the plan has been written. The strategy has not.

2. Facts and foresight

The second area tests what the strategy rests on. How finely is the market understood? As one market, or as the segments that differ in profit and position?

Does the business know its own numbers? That means profitability by product, customer and region after shared costs are allocated properly. Gross margin does not answer it.

Where does the strategy's insight come from, and is any of it privileged? Are plans put beside what happened? Or does every year show a dip then a climb that nobody checks? And how are trends and uncertainty handled: named and watched, or assumed away?

Example: A distributor's plan has shown a dip then a climb for five years. Nobody has put the five plans beside the five outcomes. When the review does, the pattern is obvious, and the current plan's curve is the same one. The plan is a negotiation dressed as a forecast, and the review says so.

3. Advantage

The third area tests why the business wins, and where it does. Is the source of advantage named and backed by evidence? Or is the answer "service and relationships" like everyone else?

Does the business assess its ability to win segment by segment? Or does it believe it can win wherever it shows up? Do its capabilities match its choices, or does the strategy depend on skills and assets it lacks? And does the plan anticipate competitors' likely responses, or assume they will stand still?

Example: A services firm's stated advantage is deep expertise. Its win-loss record shows it wins where it already has a relationship and loses everywhere else. It wins at a price premium it cannot explain. The advantage is the relationships, which is fine. The growth plan assumes expertise will win new accounts, which is not.

4. Resourcing and commitment

The fourth area tests whether the strategy has met the business yet. Do money and people follow it, or is the budget last year's plus inflation? What shape is the initiative portfolio? A vital few with owners and dates, or eighteen items that are all business as usual?

Has the business stopped anything in the last two years and finished stopping it? And do the choices survive contact? Or are they relitigated whenever a strong voice objects or a bad month lands?

Example: A group's strategy names two priority segments. Its budget shows the same allocation as three years ago. Its best two people run the legacy business. The strategy is sincere and has never been funded. The review's most useful page shows those two facts side by side.

5. Execution, learning and adaptation

The fifth area tests whether the strategy becomes action. It also tests whether the business would notice if the strategy stopped working. Do strategic priorities appear in team plans with dates and owners? Or are the document and the working week unrelated?

Does the organisation know and own the strategy, or was it announced once by email? How is strategy reviewed: once a year off-site, or in a rhythm that tests the choices themselves? Are the strategy's assumptions written down and watched? And does anything besides the monthly P&L measure strategic progress? The P&L measures the past.

How strategy is reviewed is a practice in the execution dimension of a Stages of Excellence strategy assessment. The five stages read:

• Lagging: Strategy is discussed once a year, off-site, and not again.
• Basic: Reviews happen but collapse into operational and financial updates.
• Competent: A regular rhythm reviews strategic progress separately from monthly operations.
• Advanced: Reviews test the strategy itself (e.g. are the choices still right?) not just execution against it.
• Leading: The review rhythm routinely changes something: resources, initiatives, occasionally the strategy.

Example: A business holds a quarterly strategy review. Its last four agendas are the monthly results, the pipeline and a safety update. The strategy has not been mentioned in a year. The review exists on the calendar and nowhere else.

How to run the review

Take the five areas in order, because each rests on the one before it. Testing resourcing for a strategy that cannot be stated is pointless. For each area, look for evidence: the document, the budget, the plan-versus-actual record, the initiative list, the board agendas. Opinion does not count.

Where a practice cannot be placed because nobody can say, write that down. Such a gap is the cheapest finding a review produces. It usually means the practice is not there.

Score honestly, then pick three moves. Twenty is too many. The first move in most reviews is one of a small set. Write the diagnosis, build the fact base, re-argue the budget, or install a review rhythm.

Each is weeks of work. None is a new strategy.

The single cheapest tool a review can use is the momentum case. It projects, without optimism, where the current course lands in five years if nothing changes. It tests the diagnosis, the plan record and the ambition in one page. It takes an afternoon with the accounts.

Frequently asked questions

How is a review different from a strategy refresh? A refresh produces a new strategy. A review tests the one you have and tells you whether a refresh is needed. Often it is not.

Do the review first. That order is the difference between weeks and months.

How often should a strategy be reviewed? The foundations, once a year, before the planning cycle. The strategy itself, in a quarterly rhythm that asks whether the choices are still right. That rhythm sits apart from the operating review.

Can a business review its own strategy? Yes, if it is willing to be uncomfortable. The evidence is all inside the business. The hard part is scoring without flattery. A structured self-assessment helps there.

What if the review finds the strategy is wrong? Then it has saved a year. A strategy that fails the first area, with no diagnosis and no choices, should be rewritten before anything else is fixed. A strategy that fails the fourth area is usually right and unfunded. An unfunded strategy is a different and easier problem.

Does passing the review mean the strategy is right? No. It means the foundations are sound.

A strategy can be well-founded and still lose to a better one. But a strategy that fails the review is almost certainly not the right one. If it is, that is luck.

• Review your own strategy's foundations
• The Stages of Excellence in strategy
• Build a momentum case