• Strategy Classics

A Plan is Not a Strategy

In this masterclass from Harvard Business Review, Roger Martin—former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and one of the world's most influential strategic thinkers—delivers a crystal-clear explanation of why most organizations confuse planning with strategy, and why that confusion guarantees mediocrity. Martin cuts straight to the uncomfortable truth: most "strategic planning" in business has nothing to do with actual strategy. Instead, it's a comforting list of activities and initiatives—improving customer experience, opening new facilities, hiring more people—that organizations intend to execute. These comprehensive plans, complete with goals, budgets, and timelines, feel reassuring because they focus entirely on things the organization controls. But that's precisely the problem. The fundamental distinction Martin draws is both simple and profound. Planning deals with resources you control—how many people to hire, how much inventory to purchase, which facilities to lease. These decisions live inside your comfort zone because you're the customer making the choices. Strategy, however, specifies a competitive outcome that depends on winning over actual customers who owe you nothing. The difference? You don't control customers, and you don't control revenue. That uncertainty is exactly what makes strategy both anxiety-inducing and essential. Martin uses Southwest Airlines as his defining example of coherent strategy. Southwest made integrated choices about where to play and how to win: point-to-point routes, secondary airports, single aircraft type, no frills, fast turnaround times. Each choice reinforced the others, creating a system competitors couldn't easily copy without abandoning their own business models. That's strategy—a coherent set of choices about how to win in your chosen market space, not a laundry list of good ideas. The trap most organizations fall into is mistaking activity for strategy. They create plans that lack coherence—disconnected initiatives that don't specify how they'll collectively accomplish competitive advantage. These plans feel safer because they avoid the hard choices about what *not* to do and why. But as Martin warns, planning without strategy is a guaranteed path to losing. It's a slow descent into commodity competition where you're managing only the expense side of the business. Martin's prescription is deceptively simple: write your strategy on a single page. Specify where you're choosing to play, how you're choosing to win, what capabilities you need, what management systems must support those capabilities, and what goal you're trying to achieve. Then—and this is crucial—lay out the logic. What must be true for this strategy to deliver the outcome you hope for? This isn't about eliminating risk; it's about being explicit about the risks you're taking and why you believe they'll pay off. The video concludes with Martin's stark choice: planning feels comfortable but guarantees losing. Strategy feels uncomfortable because it forces you outside your comfort zone and requires making bets on outcomes you don't fully control. But strategy gives you the only real chance of winning—of creating sustainable competitive advantage rather than just managing activities. For any professional involved in organizational direction-setting, this nine-minute video is essential viewing. Martin's articulation is so sharp, so clear, that it permanently changes how you think about the difference between playing and winning. Read More

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• Nov 2025