What makes a strategy agile? Let’s look in more detail at a few key points from the figure above. The key question is: What factors determine whether your strategy, your strategic analysis and planning are agile?

1. What makes your strategy execution agile, is spending a maximum of 20% of the available time and resources on the basics of strategy-setting. It’s only when you carry out your strategic plans that you see proof of success or failure, so that’s why you need to invest the other 80% of your time and resources in execution. Execution is where you get the feedback that leads to adjustments, which makes your strategy agile. That’s why I make “maximum time” recommendations in the introduction to each accelerator.

Stop holding those arduous strategic planning sessions every three or five years. You’re better off defining a long-term vision that spans a longer period of time. It should be neither too vague nor too detailed, because there’s no point to either. Your vision, mission, strategy and the Big Why should be a tight, coherent whole that stays fresh for at least five years. This “shelf-life” enables managers to decide along the way how the organization can adapt to the changing circumstances. There’s nothing wrong with thinking about the future, but keep strategic planning concise. The old habit of planning your strategy every three to five years takes up too much time. Do it every three years, but keep it short.

The same goes for business planning. Make your annual business plans very practical and brief. Make sure your plans make a distinction between the targets set for daily management (running the business) and those meant to renew your existing business model (changing the business). On the change side, define no more than five must-win battles. This is all the strategy you need to start executing. Scale what works and remain agile so you can make the necessary adjustments.

2. Your strategy also becomes more agile if you make strategic analysis and planning an iterative process. Think of it as a developing, emerging strategy rather than a finished strategy set in stone. If the three-year interval I mentioned has not yet elapsed, but strategic recalibration is necessary, then do it. In fact, you may find that there are two or three strategic issues per year that require recalibration or adjustment of your long-term strategic direction. I call these strategic priority questions. It would be strange if your organization didn’t have these.

Don’t be afraid to work on various elements of strategy-setting simultaneously. One manager told me that, to his surprise, some of the employees involved in a mission and vision discussion got angry when they discovered that underlying projects had already been defined and some projects had even started. They had expected the mission and vision process to be rounded off first, and all subsequent activity to take place later, step-by-step, in a logical order. However, we can’t afford to work that way anymore. Parallel and iterative processes are sound ways of working. The definitive strategy depends on its execution. Strategy equals execution, remember?

Wisdom

Agility must not lead to aimlessness. Agility depends on the wisdom to know where you need to persevere and where you need to adapt your strategy. Agility is the capacity to look at all developments and patterns and pinpoint areas that need to be addressed with an eye to staying the course of your long-term vision. I once heard a sponsor in the financial services industry sigh about how often he and his team had to make a 180-degree turn. Six months earlier, he had helped design a new marketing strategy that had to be implemented in a rush because an important niche market had collapsed. However, soon after the strategy was ready to go, the company’s newly hired CEO said the priority should be on target group segmentation, so the marketing team had to go back to square one. Perhaps this is an example of agility. But it might also be a serious case of corporate Korsakoff syndrome, in which every manager feels the need to reinvent the wheel, not as a means to an end but as an end in itself.

The research I conducted for Strategy = Execution revealed that one of the main failure factors is a lack of smart agility, in other words neglecting to seize opportunities and control threats. One leader I spoke to called that responsible agility. To execute your strategy with agility, you need a clear framework. Vacillating too much is like having a compass that keeps giving you wildly different readings for true north.

Not hip, not a hype

Myths about new digital organizations abound. Many people think their business is organized for agility because they have a modern, hip internet company. This misconception is based on the fact that their business is growing rapidly. In the past, fast-growing (non-digital) organizations also had to adjust their processes, structure, management, culture and systems every few months. Any company that didn’t do so would implode. That’s simply inherent to growth, and it makes little difference whether your organization is new or old. People overgeneralize: startups are flexible and established companies are unwieldy. But flexibility is not necessarily innate to modern internet companies. As one entrepreneur said: “We’re growing so fast it can feel like we’re an oil tanker already, while we’re really still just a speedboat.” Really? You can’t afford to assume that you’re agile. If you do, you might realize you’ve already become an oil tanker—but by then it’ll be too late.