Recently, I rewatched The Founder – the biopic of Ray Kroc and the birth of McDonald's. There’s a moment early on where Kroc, then a struggling milkshake machine salesman, experiences the original McDonald's restaurant for the first time. He watches in awe as orders are fulfilled in seconds, not minutes. The kitchen runs like an assembly line. There’s no clutter, no waitstaff, just burgers, fries, and drinks. He realises instantly: this isn’t just a better restaurant – it’s a better model. One that could be replicated. Scaled. Franchised.
That moment of insight changed the world of dining. And it offers a crucial lesson for anyone working on business strategy.
Strategy Without Insight Falls Flat
Too often, strategic planning begins not with insight, but with ambition:
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"We want to grow by 20%."
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"We aim to lead the market."
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"We need to expand internationally."
These are legitimate goals. But without a clear, distinctive insight, they tend to produce strategies that are little more than laundry lists: generic initiatives, vague objectives, and hopeful KPIs. The result? Minimal traction. Disengaged teams. And plans that rarely make it past the next annual cycle.
Particularly in legacy corporations, what is called 'strategy' is often just the distribution of fiscal goals across business units, with little attention to the underlying market dynamics. Real strategy demands stepping back to rethink and reframe, not just executing next year's sales targets.
Traditional corporate planning cycles lead to "it's October, so we do strategy"-type thinking. This is a performative exercise which ends, not when a strategy is formed, but when "it's November, so we move on to business planning". The results are typically plans which are "last year + 10%". "Last year" because, in the absence of any strategic insight, there is no impetus to do anything different from what you did last year. And "+ 10%" because it would be politically unacceptable to target the same performance as the year before. The truth is, such approaches are much more likely to yield "last year - 10%" as markets (customers, competitors, etc.) move forward, leaving you behind.
The Power of Strategic Insight
An insight, by contrast, is a piercing understanding of how things really work—often something others have missed. It's the seed from which meaningful strategy grows.
Ray Kroc didn’t start with a vague ambition to "dominate fast food." He saw something others didn’t: a radically new operating model. That insight gave him clarity on what to scale and how. Everything else flowed from that.
Strategic insights can come from many sources:
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Frustrations your customers face that no one else is addressing.
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Operational efficiencies that provide a repeatable advantage.
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Market trends that others are too slow to recognise.
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Patterns in your own data that reveal untapped potential.
What matters is that the strategy starts by answering: What do we know or see that others don't?
Once you uncover a genuine insight, it can be impossible to unsee it. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. famously said:
"A mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions."
Insight reshapes not just what you know, but how you see. It rewires your understanding of the landscape. And that shift is a powerful driver for strategic change.
Often, the most powerful strategies don't rely on a single insight, but the convergence of multiple small ones. IKEA’s flat-pack innovation wasn’t just about cheap manufacturing—it combined insights about transportation costs, customer behaviour, and scalable design.
Ambition + Insight = Real Strategy
Ambition is still essential. Insight without ambition is just an observation. But ambition alone isn’t enough.
The most effective strategies are forged at the intersection of clarity and opportunity:
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Clarity about what's really going on, and what that means.
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Opportunity to act decisively and distinctively because of it.
That’s where your strategic narrative gains coherence. That’s where your initiatives start to align. And that’s where people start to believe in the strategy.
Where Do You Get Insight?
You can just wait for insight to strike, as it did Ray Kroc in 1954. You can train yourself to be more observant so that you are more likely to see it. But you might still wait a long time.
Instead, you can look for insight with a combination of diligence, curiosity, experience and know-how. Many strategy frameworks help you process information to make it easier to extract insight, if they're used well. (See Strategic Tools for Analysis.)
Insight doesn't have to come from lucky epiphanies. Facilitated workshops, scenario planning, and future-back thinking exercises can systematically create the conditions where transformative insights emerge. (If you need help planning your next strategy workshop, see our Services page.)
What This Means For You
If you're in the process of setting or refreshing your strategy, ask yourself:
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Have we grounded our plans in a genuine insight?
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Is our ambition backed by something only we understand or are acting on?
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Can we articulate that insight clearly to our teams and stakeholders?
Because in strategy, insight is what makes the difference between a bold vision and a believable, executable plan.
If you don't yet have a clear insight, that's not a failure — it's an opportunity. Insight generation is a strategic skill that can be cultivated with the right tools, frameworks, and mindset.
Need help crystallising the insight that will make your strategy work? Book a call at https://calendly.com/chriscfox/discuss-your-needs or explore how StratNavApp.com can help you develop evidence-based, insight-led strategies that drive real results.
