
← Engineering the Intelligent Enterprise4 okt · 38 min
FIELD NOTE #054 | The Strategy Arrived After The Decision
<p>The Strategy Arrived After The Decision</p><p><br></p><p>---</p><p><br></p><p>Some strategies are instruments for deciding. </p><p>Others are instruments for explaining.</p><p><br></p><p>The difficulty is that both look exactly the same once they have been turned into slides.</p><p><br></p><p>The decision may have happened weeks earlier. </p><p>In a corridor. </p><p>Over lunch.</p><p> On a phone call nobody minuted.</p><p><br></p><p>---</p><p><br></p><p>Then came the strategy. Forty-two pages of it. </p><p>Rigorous. </p><p>Polished. </p><p>Pointing exactly where it was always going to point.</p><p><br></p><p>The board approved it. </p><p>Nobody asked about the lunch.</p><p><br></p><p>---</p><p><br></p><p>This episode examines <strong>Reverse Strategy</strong> — a strategy written to explain a decision already made, organised after the conclusion rather than before it.</p><p><br></p><p>Sometimes that is harmless. </p><p>Sometimes instinct is faster than analysis. </p><p>Sometimes the most important reasoning happened in a conversation that was never written down.</p><p><br></p><p>---</p><p><br></p><p>The problem begins when the explanation is mistaken for the reasoning.</p><p><br></p><p>Because then the organisation examines the framework while the actual decision-making event remains entirely outside the frame.</p><p><br></p><p>---</p><p><br></p><p>The portable question — worth carrying into every strategy presentation you will ever sit in:</p><p><strong>"Which came first — the strategy or the decision it supports?"</strong></p><p><br></p><p><em>The decision arrived from instinct.</em> </p><p><em>The strategy arrived from PowerPoint.</em></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Field Note #054.</strong></p>