At a steel processing plant in Nairobi, the CEO invited the board to tour a newly commissioned mill, installed just six months earlier under their approved “five-year strategy.”
What the directors saw shocked them: idle machines, rust already forming, and workers idle. The market had shifted, and China had dumped cheaper steel into the region, collapsing demand.
One director sighed, “But we just approved this.” That is the fallacy. Strategy was treated as a one-time event, not a continuous discipline.
Some boards feel they have done their part once they “approve the strategy.”
But approval is not adaptation, and a strategy that is not revisited becomes obsolete faster than the ink dries. Your plan might be brilliant.
But if you are not revisiting the assumptions, scanning the horizon, and responding to shocks, you are not doing strategy.
You are curating a museum. Winning boards do not treat strategy as a calendar event.
Boards are often told to “approve strategy” and then leave execution to management. But here is the real problem: strategy is not a document. It is a discipline. The afflicted are those who were taught to treat strategy like a once-a-year gala dinner, instead of a continuous feedback loop.
You are not failing because you lack strategy. You are failing because you treat it like an event, not a system.
“The strategy that wins is not the most ambitious; it is the most attended to. Your strategy is alive. Treat it that way. Stop waiting for next year. Start adjusting now..”
Best boards embed strategy into every meeting
- Monthly Strategic Pulse
Dedicate 30 minutes in every board meeting to a strategic issue of the month. One pager. One bold question. Example: “What are we doing to counter new regional entrants in our logistics segment?”
This keeps the board in shape, like a muscle.
- Strategy Tracker Dashboard
Convert your five strategic goals into real-time dashboards. Ask monthly:
- What has moved?
- What is stuck?
- What new risks emerged?
- What trends do we see?
3. Quarterly Assumptions Check
Strategy is a bet on assumptions. Each quarter, revisit one:
- Is our customer still the same?
- Is our pricing model still competitive?
- Is our competitive moat holding?
- Annual Strategy Reset Retreat
Keep it, but change the mindset. It is not a strategy creation retreat–it is a strategy reset based on lessons, blind spots, and horizon shifts.
- CEO Strategic Insight Memo
Require the CEO to write a 1-page strategic insight before every board meeting. It must answer: “What has changed in the business environment, and how should we adapt?”
The strategy that wins is not the most ambitious; it is the one that receives the most attention. Your plan is alive. Treat it that way. Stop waiting for next year. Start adjusting now.
