The problem with books about strategy

You have read several good strategy books. You may even have completed a SWOT analysis or filled in a business model canvas. But when Monday morning arrives, you are still left asking: what, exactly, should we do next?

There are many excellent books about strategy. See, for example, this list: The 5 books every business strategist should read, as well as this longer list of books about strategy.

They all, however, have one problem: they're aimed at people who are willing and able to invest a lot of time in thinking about strategy.

Most people do not have that time. They have businesses to run. They are engineers, accountants or marketers. They have businesses, divisions or departments to lead.

And even if they found the time, they would still be left with an array of disparate theories, trying to work out how to apply them in practice.

Learning versus doing strategy

There is an important distinction between learning strategy and doing strategy. Books can improve how you think about strategy. They help you recognise patterns, ask better questions and make stronger choices. But they cannot hold your evidence, show how one decision affects another, keep your team aligned, or remind you when the world has changed.

That is why we read those books, took the knowledge we gained, combined it with our decades of experience helping organisations develop and execute business strategies, and built it into StratNav.

How StratNav helps

StratNav does not replace strategic thinking, reading or judgement. It gives you a practical workspace for turning strategic ideas into a connected, living system. You can capture evidence, develop insights, make choices, define goals, coordinate initiatives and review results in one place.

Instead of leaving your thinking in separate documents, meeting notes and spreadsheets, you can connect the evidence behind your decisions to the goals, initiatives, actions and responsibilities that follow from them. When circumstances change, you can review the evidence, understand the implications for related decisions and update your strategy with your team.

You remain responsible for the judgement and decisions; StratNav helps you apply, connect and maintain them more confidently. And we provide the guidance you need, specific to your circumstances, when you need it.

So you can develop and execute your strategy with confidence, using the thinking and insight that matter most to your organisation, whether you have read all the books or not.

A short worked example

Imagine you run an agency. You have read about positioning and customer value, and you know that trying to serve every possible client makes it harder to stand out. The ideas are useful, but they do not by themselves tell you how to turn that insight into a coordinated plan.

Before using StratNav, your notes from client conversations may sit in different documents, your team may hold different views about your best customers, and your priorities may be discussed in meetings without being consistently translated into action.

With StratNav, you can capture evidence from client interviews, feedback and sales conversations in one place. You can then develop and identify the priority insights: perhaps your most profitable clients value a particular specialist capability, while prospects are unclear about how that capability differs from other agencies.

From there, you can use your judgement to make a clear strategic choice and define a goal, such as strengthening your position with that client group. You can create linked initiatives: refine your offer, update your messaging, develop relevant case studies, and equip the sales team to communicate the value consistently. Each initiative can have an owner, actions and measures of progress.

As the work proceeds, you can review results with your team, assess new evidence, and adjust the strategy where necessary. If the market, your clients or competitors change, StratNav helps you see what may need to change elsewhere in your strategy. Instead of leaving positioning as an interesting idea from a book, you have connected client evidence, strategic insight, choices, goals, initiatives and review in one practical journey.

How to get started

Start a strategy project in StratNav and turn one current business challenge into a connected set of insights, choices and actions.