Strategy Impostors
The things routinely called strategy that are not. Martin is forceful and consistent about each, and most organisations are running at least two.
The list of initiatives. The most common impostor: a "strategic plan" of sensible projects that sum to nothing distinctive. Each item defensible, the whole thing directionless, no integration, no theory of advantage. The adjective. "Strategic sourcing", "strategic HR": strategic used as a synonym for important, describing no choice at all. The dream. "Become the best in the world at X." Lafley's line applies: hope is not a strategy. It is an unanchored Winning Aspiration, box one mounted on a wall with boxes two to five missing. Execution-first. "Strategy is easy, execution is everything" presupposes a strategy worth executing, and usually there is not one. Operational excellence. Real, valuable, and shared by every rival, which is why it cannot be an advantage: Operational Excellence Is Not Strategy.
The rapid audit
Run Martin's Three Laws over any document called a strategy. Impostors fail on choice, the Opposite Test; on integration, the choices merely coexist; or on compelling customer action, no customer behaviour is predicted to change. Usually all three. The catalogue's close kin is Rumelt's Bad Strategy: two lists of the same disease, and between them they cover essentially every specimen we are shown.
Why the impostors survive
Because each one is easier to produce than a strategy and looks similar enough at board distance. A list of initiatives can be assembled by aggregation, no trade-offs required. An adjective costs nothing. A dream photographs well. Real strategy requires closing options in public, which is uncomfortable, so organisations reliably drift to the impostors unless something forces the discomfort, which is what the Strategy Choice Cascade is for.
How this connects to OKRs
Goal systems inherit the impostor their strategy is. The initiative list becomes task-based Key Results; the dream becomes blue-sky Objectives that fail the Opposite Test; execution-first becomes a wall of well-formatted OKRs testing no theory of advantage. When an OKR portfolio looks busy and means nothing, we audit the strategy before touching a single goal, because the goals are usually telling the truth about it.
One line to keep: Every impostor predicts its own OKR failure; audit the strategy before you touch a goal.
Our synthesis of Roger Martin’s published work, sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
What are the strategy impostors? +
Documents that look like strategy but make no choice: the initiative list, the aspiration-as-strategy, the operational-excellence plan, the numbers-as-strategy. Rumelt's Bad Strategy catalogues the same disease. Each fails Martin's three laws.
How do impostors show up in OKRs? +
Goal systems inherit the impostor their strategy is: initiative lists become task-based Key Results, dreams become Opposite-Test-failing Objectives. When a portfolio looks busy and means nothing, audit the strategy first, the goals are usually telling the truth about it.
Reading about method is not the same as running it. We install this system and build the capability that stays.
Turn strategy into executed strategy →