Directions & Destinations

Most planning presentations open up possibilities but do not close them. They are exploratory; they analyze issues but never make choices, and for me, strategy is about choosing.

“Strategy can be considered a simple machine that consists of just four working parts: Ends, Ways, Means, and Assumptions”

For Gray, Ends were the goals, Ways the actions taken, Means were the resources deployed, and Assumptions were the necessary leaps, imagination, and guesses.

I became convinced that whilst we had a purpose of sorts, we had no real direction nor any mechanism of learning nor any means to determine the why of movement which is at the heart of strategy. We were successful in that we stumbled from one opportunity to another but we could just as easily be walking further out to sea as much as crossing the ri... See more