When a Plan Isn’t a Strategy

Most companies say they have a strategy.
If you ask them what it is, they will usually show you a plan.

There will be goals, initiatives, timelines, maybe even a roadmap. Everything will look sensible, well-intentioned, and reassuring. And yet, once the meeting is over, very little will actually change.

This is not because people are incompetent or lazy. More often, it’s because what gets called “strategy” never really leaves the head of the entrepreneur or leadership team. It exists as an internal narrative, loosely shared, rarely challenged, and almost never tested against how customers actually behave.

Inside the company, this creates a strange situation. Many people would like to contribute, improve things, or simply understand what really matters. Instead, they are left guessing. They execute tasks, attend meetings, and deliver initiatives, without ever being sure how any of it fits together.

At that point, the problem is not execution.
It’s that a plan is being asked to do the job of a strategy.

Confusing a plan with a strategy often feels harmless, even sensible.

A plan gives shape to uncertainty. It creates movement, tasks, deadlines. It reassures everyone involved that something is happening.

Strategy, on the other hand, feels slower and more exposed. It requires naming priorities, but also exclusions. It forces trade-offs into the open, where they can be questioned.

In many organisations, especially smaller ones, a plan quietly takes the place of strategy because it reduces friction. It allows progress without confrontation, alignment without disagreement, and momentum without clarity.

For a while, this works.
Until it doesn’t.

Part of the problem is that very few people are ever taught what strategy actually is. Most careers reward planning, execution, and optimisation. Strategy is often assumed to be something you either “have” or “don’t”, rather than a discipline that needs to be practised.

A plan feels active. It creates motion and urgency. Strategy, by contrast, feels slower and heavier. It requires sustained effort before action, and forces uncomfortable choices before visible progress.

In busy organisations, it’s easy to mistake movement for direction.

When choice is avoided, complexity explodes

Earlier in my career, while working in FMCG, I was involved in a project with a company that was genuinely innovative. The product was ahead of its time, even in a category that was already extremely mature.

The problem was not the product. It was distribution.

Because the product was meant for “everyone”, the conclusion seemed obvious: it needed to be available everywhere. Specialist retailers, supermarkets, small shops, online stores, marketplaces, even pharmacies.

On paper, this looked like ambition. In reality, it was a lack of choice.

It wasn’t a global giant with unlimited resources or unassailable awareness. It didn’t have the financial strength, nor the sales force, to properly support such a wide distribution footprint.

Something similar happened with the product portfolio. What was initially meant to be a diversified range slowly collapsed into the same few best sellers, everywhere. Exception after exception, the portfolio became uniform, not by design, but by necessity.

The result was predictable. Low but stable rotations, spread across far too many points of sale. Delistings within months. And increasingly uncomfortable conversations about pricing differences across channels.

The plan was clear.
The strategy wasn’t.

Strategy is about being choiceful

A useful way to think about the difference is this: A plan answers the question “what are we going to do next?”

Strategy tries to answer a more uncomfortable one: “why this, and not something else?”

Plans organise actions.
Strategy organises choices.

Plans assume a world that is reasonably stable.
Strategy exists precisely because the world is complex and unpredictable.

During a MiniMBA I attended some time ago, one idea stuck with me more than any framework or model: the importance of being choiceful.

Strategy is not about covering all bases. It’s about deciding which ones you are willing to abandon.

Good strategy work embraces complexity early on, only to simplify aggressively later. It is fed by diagnosis rather than assumptions, and it resists the temptation to jump into tactics before real choices have been made.

A plan can exist without choices.
A strategy cannot.

When strategy is not fed by reality

The absence of choice is one way strategy quietly disappears. Ignoring diagnosis is another.

I once worked on a startup project whose ambition was to build a virtual marketplace for local commerce. The idea was generous, even innovative. What it hadn’t fully accounted for was reality.

The entire model depended on two assumptions: that local vendors would actively join the platform, and that customers would naturally follow. Neither happened.

Finding vendors proved extremely difficult. Reaching consumers became almost impossible. And by the time this was clear, the platform had already been built from scratch. Not a simple off-the-shelf solution, but a fully custom product, developed end to end.

This is a common founder trap. Believing that a good idea will sell itself. Forgetting that being convinced is not the same as being a customer.

You are never your target market.

When tactics become a substitute for thinking

In situations like these, teams often move very fast on tactics. Campaigns, messages, channels, formats. The energy is real. The output impressive.

But when results disappoint, the conversation rarely goes back to direction or priorities. It goes straight to optimisation. Better messages. Better targeting. More activity.

Without realising it, tactics become a substitute for strategy rather than its expression.

There is an old line often attributed to Sun Tzu that captures this tension well:

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Many organisations are very good at producing noise.

A quieter way to think about strategy

Strategy doesn’t need to be loud or sophisticated. It needs to be shareable.

Not as a slide deck or a slogan, but as a common language that allows people to disagree, contribute, and understand what really matters. When that language is missing, plans multiply. Meetings fill the gap. Execution accelerates, while direction slowly fades.

At that point, the problem is no longer the plan.
It’s the absence of a strategy that people can actually use.