The power of simplicity: Keeping your strategy simple
Updated 5 min read
Keep your strategy simple: focus on the next best action, make clear choices and turn strategic priorities into results.
Contents
Contents · 5 sections
The most important lesson I have learned about strategy is to keep it simple. At the end of the day, strategic thinking should help you decide and act with greater confidence, not create more complexity.
The next best action
I call this the Next Best Action, or NBA.
A next best action should be evidence-based, aligned to the intended outcome, feasible with available resources, and more valuable than the alternatives you are choosing not to pursue.
Of course, finding it is rarely easy. You need to consider questions such as:
- How do you define what “best” means in this situation?
- How do you evaluate the options available to you?
- How do you know whether you have overlooked an even better option?
These questions are especially difficult because the future is uncertain. You cannot know exactly what will happen, how customers will respond, what competitors will do or which risks will materialise. Scenario planning can help you prepare for multiple plausible futures rather than relying on a single prediction.
That is why we use strategic tools and techniques. They help you explore the situation, test assumptions, compare choices and make better-informed decisions. But the central question remains simple: what should we do next?
A worked example
Keeping strategy simple does not mean making it shallow. It means making a deliberate choice, then translating that choice into a practical and testable next step.
Too complex: “Improve growth, customer experience, operational efficiency and innovation.”
Simple strategic focus: “Increase renewal revenue by removing the three biggest causes of customer churn.”
Next best action: “Interview ten recently churned customers and classify the reasons for leaving.”
The first statement covers several important ambitions, but gives little guidance about where to begin. The second makes a clear choice about the outcome that matters. The third turns that choice into an action that can generate evidence and help you decide what to do next.
Do not let terminology get in the way
I have heard people argue at length about the meaning of strategy terms. What is the difference between purpose and mission? Between strategy and tactics? Between goals, objectives, KPIs, targets and initiatives?
These distinctions can be useful when they help people communicate clearly. But they should never become an end in themselves. Words are tools. If a debate about language does not help you make a better decision or take more effective action, it is probably not where you should be spending your time.
What matters is not whether everyone uses precisely the same labels. What matters is whether you can work together to decide what needs to happen, who will do it and how you will know it is working. Effective strategy meetings should lead to clear decisions, ownership and follow-through.
So, if someone insists on turning every strategic conversation into ideological sophistry, it may be time to find someone else to help with your strategic thinking.
Strategy is always context-dependent
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to strategy. Every organisation faces a different combination of customers, capabilities, competitors, constraints and opportunities. Strategy is inherently context-dependent.
That does not mean you have to start from nothing. There are several principles that provide useful starting points:
- Offer customers something they genuinely want, are willing to pay for at more than it costs you to provide, and cannot easily get elsewhere. A Customer Value Map can help you understand where that value lies.
- Focus on the small number of things most likely to make a meaningful difference, rather than the many things that will make little difference.
- Recognise that every genuine priority requires something else to be delayed, delegated, stopped or deliberately left undone. Strategic focus means having the discipline to say no to work that does not support the choices you have made.
- Break work into the smallest practical pieces that can deliver real value.
- Finish a few important things rather than starting too many things at once. (It is better to finish fewer things than it is to start more things.)
- Ensure people understand the overall plan, their role in delivering it and how their work connects with everyone else’s.
- Organise, incentivise and resource people so they can work together effectively.
- Build advantages that are harder for competitors to copy. Competitor analysis can help you test whether an apparent advantage is genuinely distinctive.
Even these principles are not rules to follow blindly. They are prompts to help you think. Your job is to test them against your own situation and decide what will create the most value now.
Keep the basics in view
If you want to get ahead, focus on the basics. Understand what matters most, make a clear choice, say no to competing demands that do not support that choice, turn it into action and follow through with discipline. Strategic initiatives provide a practical way to organise and deliver the work needed to make those choices real.
That does not make strategy simplistic. It makes it useful.
As Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying, “Keep things as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Or, as Leonardo da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Plan your Next Best Action now
Put this into practice now:
- Write down the outcome you most need to improve.
- List the three most plausible actions you could take.
- Compare their likely impact, evidence, effort and risks.
- Choose one action to complete this week, and record what you expect to learn.
StratNav can help you capture the evidence, compare your options, link the action you choose to your goals and initiatives, and review whether it is producing the result you intended. Try StratNav and turn your strategic priorities into clear next best actions.
