My strategic breakfast

It seems these days everything has become strategic. If a salesperson makes a sale, it is strategic. If a programmer write a code, it will be strategic code. So I figured why not a strategic breakfast, or a strategic drive to the office, or better yet, strategic breathing.

So many people use the word strategic incorrectly that it has almost lost its meaning.

The two most common mistakes are:

1. Confusing strategy with objective: Strategy is an approach, not the objective. "My strategy is to be the #1 company" is an objective, not a strategy.

2. Confusing strategy with an obvious thing a company/person must do. Claiming that "my strategy is to grow revenues and profits" is like saying "my strategy is to breathe." Strategy involves making a trade-off, choosing one option over many others. If your strategy is not debatable, it is probably not really a strategy.

A good corporate strategy is one that is actionable, that is proactive, that is dynamic in its response to changing market conditions.

A couple of weeks ago, after listening to a young IIM grad talk about adding value through end-to-end strategic leverage of synergy, I asked him to stop and use words and their meaning which would have appeared in the Oxford dictionary of twenty years ago.

Why do our business schools teach students to talk in such a meaningless way? Recently I interviewed quite a few candidates to fill positions in my group. Anyone using meaningless language got asked a couple of times to "be more specific" or "give examples". If the person insisted on using "strategic"/"value"/"leverage" on the average of one or more per sentence, s/he was sure to be dropped from my short-list.

So, No, Thanks! I won't be having a strategic breakfast anytime soon.