Seven strategy tensions and how to not misunderstand them.

Or, seven of my beefs with how a lot of so-called strategy gets it wrong.

Hello friends,

tl;dr: I’m writing a seven-part series on common misunderstandings about strategy. A bit of background here, followed by links to Parts 1 and 2 of the series. 

Some weeks ago, I was doing a whiteboard thought session with a pal when he asked me to explain how my view of strategy is distinctive and special. Fortunately, I’ve been thinking about, doing, and teaching strategy for so long — more than 15 years — that I could step up to the board and immediately dash off seven pairs of words (you can see the originals at the very end of this post).

Over the intervening weeks, I nudged these seven pairs of words into a bit more clarity. You can see them below, though they’re almost guaranteed to change as I unpack each one in turn.

Seven strategy tensions leading to misunderstandings about what strategy is and how to do it.

I soon realised that presenting these seven concept pairs without more context leaves the situation murky. What do these concept pairs even stand for? My answer for now is that each pair represents a tension in how we could think of strategy, and misunderstandings arise when we choose the wrong thing to emphasise in each pair.

The common misunderstandings are that strategy and planning are the same thing, that strategy is abstracted, predominantly cognitive, and goals-focused, that strategic actions should be clear, big, legible, singular, and monolithic. This view of strategy as a legible, clear thing also happens to be comforting and easily explainable. Unfortunately, it is also based in deep misunderstandings about strategy.

And these misunderstandings crop up frequently.

So I’m going to unpack each of these tensions to explain why strategy is not the same as planning, that good strategy needs to be embedded, affective, and tradeoffs-oriented, and that good strategic actions are probably profuse, distributed, amorphous, small, and illegible.

Just one short, easily digestible essay per misunderstanding. I’ve already written Part 1 (on why strategy is not the same as planning) and Part 2 (on why good strategy needs to be embedded, not just abstracted).

And if you’d like to have a chat about applying these insights on strategy in your organisation, just reply to this email (or get in touch with me some other way).

See you here in a couple weeks,

VT

---

I’ve been working on tools for learning how to turn discomfort into something productive. idk is the first of these tools.

And I’ve spent the last 15 years investigating how organisations can design themselves to be good at working in uncertainty by clearly distinguishing it from risk.

How it started (18 February, 2025).