When I talk to startup founders as I’m making the rounds getting user feedback on Aytza, I keep hearing confirmation of something I’ve suspected for a long time: in some circles, strategy is a dirty word.
Startups CEOs don’t like the word “strategy.” They think it’s fluffy. They think it implies hand-waving and pontificating instead of getting things done.
So what is strategy, really?
According to the Oxford dictionary (wait, do people still use dictionaries?):
Strategy, noun: A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.
Or how I’ve always thought of it: strategy means planning what you’re going to do in the context of everything happening around you — what customers need, what competitors are doing, and what’s changing in regulation, the market dynamics, or technology. Or as my former boss used to say, “strategy is about deciding what not to do.”
Startups have a bias for action, which is great. But you can’t take every action and see how it plays out. You have limited time, money, and people. In fact, I would argue that startups are more constrained for resources than big companies, so deciding which action you’ll take is even more critical for them. Having a sound strategy helps you choose which actions have the highest chance of moving you forward.
Doing strategy right in a startup doesn’t mean 150 page decks about trends or generic frameworks (looking at you, Porter’s 5 forces!). It does mean knowing what’s happening in your market, or the market you are looking to get into: what customers need, what your competitors are doing, and how the market conditions are changing creating new opportunities. Once you have that, you can ask: what information do I still need to make a good decision? What are my strategic options? What data would help me decide what’s the best fit for my company right now? (Or at least give me the best shot at charging forward confidently.)
As a CEO, strategy is a big part of your job, it’s not something to shy away from. It is something you have to figure out how to do well in a constrained environment. It’s important to figure out the right cadence, set up, and tools to help you do this well.
One founder of a successful ten-year-old health tech startup told me that after reading an HBS analysis on how good strategy creates winning companies, he started holding an hour-long strategy session with his team every week and also a full day every month. (To be honest, I was pretty surprised, that’s more time than I’ve heard from anywhere else!) Another CEO of a unicorn healthcare startup told me that strategy is her superpower — she credits her success to constantly scanning what’s changing, getting the data needed, adapting quickly, and making deliberate moves.
Strategy doesn’t mean overthinking or slowing down. It means taking insights — from data, from conversations, from what’s shifting around you — and using them to guide better actions. The goal isn’t to analyze forever, but to identify the smallest amount of information you need to move forward confidently.
If you think about it, strategy is just the art of taking smarter, more calculated actions, reducing some of the trial and error that startups inevitably have to go through. That said, if you’d rather call it action planning than strategy, go ahead.
