I heard someone say recently, “I’ve read all the latest books on strategy, why can’t it happen like that here, at our company, within our team?”

The answer?

Because you have to design, build, and then live into strategy – dimensionally, tangibly, operationally, and emotionally. A book is, at best, a provocation. At worst, it’s another distraction, convincing you the answer is "out there." It is not. The answers and results lie in doing the hard work. Building the strategy day in and day out.

Strategy is not a transaction. Strategy is not words on a page. Strategy is not merely an offsite. Strategy is not what comes down from above for you to follow. Strategy is not sticky notes. Strategy needs to be built into all the nooks and crannies of the most fundamental aspects and people of any system.

• Your technology diet is strategy.
• Your team’s operating ways are strategy.
• Your onboarding is strategy.
• Your vision is strategy.
• Your preparedness for an agenda item is strategy.
• Your teaming architecture is strategy.
• Your leadership ethos is strategy.
• Your humanity is strategy.
• Your ability to care about more than profits is strategy.

Stop believing your entrenched ways of transacting and proclamations of busy-ness are strategic. They’re not. They are the opposite. Your transacting creates a counterforce – resistance – that works against your desires, purpose, vision, and needs.

You must learn and embrace the art of system dimensionality. As strategy. As leadership. As outcome-focused operating. As effectiveness.

For good system design. For continual change and growth.