Strategy vs Logistics

A few days ago I came across a tweet which included the semi-famous quote from General Omar Bradley, stating that “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics”. It’s an interesting and provocative point of view, threatening to knock strategy off its lofty perch, so let’s take a look.

My broad and perhaps obvious interpretation is that strategy is pointless without the logistical plan to bring it about. Some might think it’s obvious, but during my 25 years in the industry I’ve come across an expensive strategy without a workable plan several times (some from very large and expensive consultancies), or a plan without a strategy - often as part of a post mortem, looking into why a project or program has failed to deliver the business goals.

On one noteworthy occasion, the strategy paper was obviously repurposed from a similar document written for similar clients in the same sector. It went on at length about how an optimal customer experience was paramount, with boundless evidence, and that personalisation was the way forward - but beyond that it didn’t talk about the how. The roadmap was too abstract to grasp, the organisational change required was overlooked, the shift from legacy platforms to new platforms wasn’t mentioned, and the financial cost and ROI was all-but-ignored.

Which begs the question: how could they know the strategy would be a success, if they hadn’t gone to the trouble of figuring out if and how it could be done for that particular client? And at the risk of seeming cynical, was the goal just to win the next project by deliberately not empowering the customer to ‘take it from here’?

If we’re giving the authors the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they’d fallen into the leadership trap of simply setting direction, and inviting the managerial level to figure out how to get there. Used carefully this can be a great way to empower and energise the team. But there’s real danger in separating strategy from planning - the two should stress test each other. In any event, the managerial level - through no fault of their own - may not have the experience needed to plan the path forward. If you’re paying an external party for a strategy, this should also come with a detailed playbook to make it happen.

This is the work that matters. It involves understanding an organisation’s inner workings (culture, approval process, hiring, skills gaps, finances, etc.) and successfully making the argument for what needs to change, and the risks that may need to be taken. One has to develop well-formed views on what will happen when the plan encounters reality. Obviously it’s impossible to anticipate every factor, but a well thought through plan that may well be overtaken by events is infinitely better than no plan at all. The process of securing buy-in to that plan is worth as much as the plan itself, with priorities, trade-offs, budgets and technologies all being debated and agreed by the team responsible for making it happen.

They say that culture eats strategy for breakfast which, similarly, I interpret as strategy being pointless without a good culture. Thinking more broadly though, it is perhaps better to think of a good strategy as encompassing a detailed, well thought through vision, an implementation plan with sufficient detail and buy-in for the team to execute, and the guidance on how the culture may need to evolve to support the plan.

I’m convinced General Omar Bradley would agree…