Many things can be important, but only one thing can be strategic.

The word “strategic” seems to have become a euphemism for “the thing that I want to do and I want you to consider as important so that we can agree that I can go ahead and do it”. An example of this is “attending this conference is strategic”. Another might be “we had a strategic meeting”.

Strategy is the path forward that is identified as being the best thing to do to get from where we are now to where we want to go after all of the alternative have been considered. While attending a conference or having had a really productive meeting might have been determined to be the best way to achieve your end goal, would the best way to describe them be “strategic”.

The only way that I bring this up is because, if the word “strategic” is diluted by improper use, then our ability to help field teams truly lead strategically (as defined earlier in this blog) is just going to be harder.

I’d love to get your comments on this, unless you are one of those spammers who seem to think that my posts are very insightful.