Rules of Sensible Strategy Discussion

For several years, I have had the privilege of seeing strategy work in different organizations. I have heard people ask difficult questions about their future, recognize new opportunities and wrestle with choices that matter. These experiences have led me to propose a few rules for sensible strategy discussion.

Strategy concerns a future that is not yet here. We cannot inspect it as we can examine last year’s results. That makes imagination essential. It also makes it easy to suggest that almost anything could happen. Perhaps it could. But strategy must help an organization distinguish between what is possible in principle and what it has a credible path to achieving.

I find it useful to think of three worlds in strategy discussion: the world of real possibilities, the world of grounded hopes and the world of dreams. All three deserve a place. The key is for those involved to understand which world they are discussing, and preferably to share that understanding. Each world calls for a different kind of decision.

1. Spend most of the discussion in the world of real possibilities

Strategy work should begin with reality: who we are, what we can do, what is happening around us and what recent experience has taught us. It should not become an exercise in escaping the present. Our current operations may contain much that is admirable. Good strategy recognizes the work people have already done and asks how to build on it.

In this world, we discuss developments that the organization can reasonably pursue with its present strengths, resources and capacity to change. That does not mean repeating what we already do. We might serve customers better, make wiser use of resources or improve profitability. But the plans must connect to what we know about our organization and its circumstances. We should be able to say who will act, what choices will be required and why we believe the plan can work.

2. Give grounded hopes room to grow

An organization also needs to look beyond its current capabilities. New opportunities appear, and new capabilities can be developed. Some attractive ideas are therefore more than dreams, even though we cannot yet treat them as reliable plans. They belong to the world of grounded hopes.

The word grounded matters. What makes us think this opportunity may be real? What would we need to learn or become capable of doing? A small pilot might test customer interest, reveal a missing capability or show whether an unfamiliar way of working is viable. Evidence from such experiments can move a hope closer to a real possibility—or show us that it is time to change course.

This world matters particularly for developing people. A promising direction may tell us which skills and relationships to build now, before a full commitment would make sense. The discussion remains useful when everyone understands that a hope is something to investigate and cultivate, rather than an outcome to promise.

3. Keep an eye on dreams, and be honest about their distance

Dreams also have a place in strategy. They can challenge our assumptions and point towards a future we would not discover by improving today’s activities alone. Yet a compelling vision does not make its achievement likely. Some ambitions face obstacles so substantial that we cannot currently see a credible path through them.

Business does not operate under laws as fixed as those of physics. Nevertheless, organizations face real limits: scarce resources, competing commitments, entrenched habits and capabilities that take time to build. Calling an ambition a dream is a way to acknowledge the distance between that ambition and our present position.

Wise leaders can still ask what the dream reveals. Is there a small step we could take in its direction? What could we test? What changes in the environment might make it more attainable? We may not know the route, or even whether one exists. Exploration can clarify the landscape without turning the dream prematurely into a target.

The rule that connects the three worlds

The most important rule may be simple: say which world an idea belongs to before deciding what to do with it. A real possibility deserves a plan and a commitment. A grounded hope deserves learning and carefully chosen experiments. A dream deserves imagination, honest scrutiny and perhaps a first exploratory step.

Ideas can move between these worlds as an organization and its circumstances change. That is precisely why the distinction matters. Sensible strategy discussion makes room for ambition while asking, at every stage: What do we know? What would we need to learn? And what can we responsibly commit to now?