Is your plan a strategic plan or just a plan?

Well, it depends upon your definition of “strategy”. This usually comes back to some sort of high level steps / plan / direction / actions. However, one person’s high level, is another person’s detail, depending upon where you sit in the hierarchy. So when you get rid of hierarchy, “strategy” comes sown to being the best things to do rather than just some good things to do.

Everyone can have a strategy – the route that they have determined is the best route to take to make the most progress towards a goal.

To determine the best thing to do you need to answer the hardest question, i.e. determine what steps you need to take to make the most progress towards your vision, given the resources available to you, not just some good progress towards your vision.

To determine the best things to do (i.e. determine what your strategy should be) you need to look at all of the alternatives and select the best. This boils down to some portfolio management, i.e. looking at all of the things (projects and ongoing work packages) that you are doing / can do, and focus on the ones that give the best results.

Here, here and here are some papers that describe Portfolio Management, and how to compare work packages to add the most value / make the most progress towards the vision.

You can find a short presentation that describes a process to select the optimum work to do to make the most progress towards your vision here.

So, does your team have plans, or does your team have a strategic plan?