Introduction: What Are We Really Doing?
It’s easy to look busy. To mistake motion for movement. Many leaders spend their time making detailed plans, allocating resources, and checking off projects. It feels like progress. But movement is not progress, unless it’s headed somewhere purposeful.
Over the past three decades working with thousands of leaders and business owners, I’ve seen terms and process improperly used and as a result they confuse rather than clarify. One thing consistently confuses even the most experienced professionals: the difference between a plan and a strategy.
They’re not the same. And the difference really matters. Understanding this distinction can mean the difference between flatlining performance and transforming your results.
Planning and Strategy: Not Synonyms
Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, points out, “strategic planning” often turns into a list of initiatives- building a new plant, hiring staff, launching a product. These actions are valid. But they’re just not strategy.
Most “strategic plans” are neither strategic nor plans in the true sense.
Strategy is not a to-do list.
It’s a way to win.
Side-by-Side: Strategy vs. Plan
| Aspect | Strategy | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | An integrated set of choices that positions you to win | A series of activities or resource allocations |
| Focus | Outcomes and advantage in the marketplace | Internal inputs and tasks |
| Nature | A theory of success built on external realities | Execution steps based on internal control |
| Control | Customer- and competitor-driven | Organisation-controlled |
| Risk Profile | Involves risk, belief, and uncertainty | Perceived certainty, safety, and comfort |
| Coherence | Demands internal alignment and clear trade-offs | Often fragmented or departmentally driven |
| Purpose | To create a distinctive advantage and superior results | To manage operations or deliver known outcomes |
What Is Strategy, Really?
Strategy is an integrated theory of how you will win. It’s built on choices. Where will you play? How will you win? What must be true for your logic to hold?
A strategy explains why you’re doing what you’re doing—and how those actions add up to advantage. It’s a chain of reasoning, not a list of tasks. It links your aspiration to your choices, to your capabilities, and ultimately to a result that matters. When you have a real strategy, your team knows what game they’re in, how they’re trying to win, and what success will look like beyond internal milestones.
It means committing to a future that hasn’t yet arrived- and may never, unless you cause it.
Strategy is unsettling. Because it’s not just about what you’ll do- it’s about what you believe will happen if you do it. Many of these hypotheses can be verified to some degree, and should be. They should be built on principles.
In Generative Leadership, we say:
You’re always generating a future—either by design or by default.
Strategy is designing that future with intention. Planning, by contrast, more often perpetuates the default.
When we talk about generating a future by design, we mean creating a coherent picture of what success looks like, and actively aligning our choices and actions to realise it. It involves vision, commitment, and authorship. The default, by contrast, means continuing along a familiar path. Inside existing paradigms, repeating past patterns, following industry norms, or executing inherited plans without questioning their relevance. Designing is intentional; defaulting is reactive. Strategy interrupts the drift of the default by asking: what future are we willing to stand for, and what will we cause that wouldn’t have happened anyway?
What Is Planning?
Planning is (more) comforting. You get to decide what resources you’ll spend and when. much is known and understood. It’s something your accountant would like.
That’s why planning often feels productive- it provides clarity about effort, timelines, and budgets. But activity is not achievement. Planning says, “We will do these things.” Strategy asks, “Why these things? And how do they generate an outcome that matters?” Without a guiding strategy, even the best-laid plans can drift off-course, disconnected from impact.
Plans live on the cost side of the business:
- How many people to hire.
- Which campaigns to launch.
- What buildings to lease or buy.
These are choices you can control. They feel safe. But they don’t tell you if those actions will lead to success.
In a consulting engagement with a national logistics company, the leadership team proudly shared their five-year plan. It had dozens of initiatives. On the surface, justified, even ‘needed’. When we examined them together, I asked:
“What do all these efforts add up to? What are you trying to achieve competitively? What future are these creating?”
Silence.
They were executing plans without a coherent theory of success and future. In times of of such massive change… that’s a real problem. It’s a sure way to be irrelevant tomorrow.
Strategy Requires a Leap
Unlike a plan, strategy isn’t about what you control. It’s about what you influence.
A plan operates in the realm of known inputs—budgets, timelines, and resources. You make decisions about what to do, and how to allocate effort. The results are generally predictable.
But strategy lives in the realm of uncertainty and possibility. It begins with a theory—a hypothesis about how the world will respond to your actions.
Theory: a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
This system of ideas can be like…
- If we choose this customer segment,
- And if we serve them in a way no one else can,
- Then we’ll earn their loyalty, grow our market, and outperform our competitors.
None of this is certain. That’s the leap. You cannot prove your strategy will succeed- you can only believe it’s coherent and possible, then take action aligned with that belief.
In Generative Leadership, this is called authorship. You generate a future not by forecasting it, but by declaring it, standing for it, and acting with integrity to bring it about. Itt isn’t hope. Its is coherent action base don a commitment to a future state.
Strategy demands that you place a stake in the ground and say, “This is the future we’re creating. This is what we believe will work. …and why…” Then, you live into that future—adjusting, refining, and learning as the real world responds.
Case Study: Playing to Win vs. Playing to Play
Consider Netflix. When Blockbuster dominated the video rental market, most of their efforts were focused on expanding store count, improving store layout, and refining late fee policies. All sensible plans. But they lacked a strategy for where the market was heading.
Netflix, on the other hand, had a theory of the future. They bet early on a mail-order DVD subscription model—unconventional at the time. Then they shifted again, this time to streaming, before the infrastructure or market demand was obvious. That wasn’t just bold—it was strategic.
Their theory was simple:
- The future of entertainment is digital.
- Consumers want immediate access, not late fees.
- Owning the platform gives you leverage over content and customer experience.
Netflix committed early. They invested in content delivery networks, built algorithms for personalised recommendations, and later, began producing their own content—transforming themselves from distributor to creator.
They weren’t just planning. They were playing to win. And they rewrote the rules of the industry while their competitors were busy optimising stores that consumers would soon abandon.
In contrast, Blockbuster was “playing to play”—managing stores, adjusting policies, refining operations. But they had no coherent theory of how to win in a changing world.
Why Strategy Feels Uncomfortable
In Generative Leadership, we train people to move from comfort zone to commitment. Plans are comfortable. Strategy demands commitment to a possibility—not yet real, not fully controllable.
This shift happens through a deliberate method. We help individuals see where they are operating by default- where familiar patterns, assumptions, and internal narratives are guiding action without deeper authorship. Through inquiry, reflection, and design, we bring to the surface what truly matters to them. Then, through rigorous coaching, they generate a new context—a commitment to a designed future—and build the structure and language to stand for it.
It’s about metacognition, structural thinking and transformation. By working at the level of worldview, identity, and speech, we enable leaders to generate from being- not reaction. Commitment arises naturally when a person stands for something larger than comfort and aligns their actions to a future accordingly.
A plan lets you stay within your comfort zone. A strategy pulls you into your edge. And at the edge, only at the edge, growth happens.
Managers are trained to manage risk. But leaders? Leaders take stands. They act on a future that’s not yet proven—and bring others with them.
How to Build Strategy That Works
- Start with an Aspiration (Vision): What future are you committed to generate? What does winning look like?
- Define Where to Play and How to Win (Ideate and Scope): What segment, market, or geography will you focus on? How will you serve that space better than anyone else?
- Build Coherence (Deep Design): Ensure your choices reinforce each other. Capabilities, systems, and people must align.
- Lay Out the Logic (Deep Design): Articulate: “What must be true for this strategy to succeed?” These become your indicators for monitoring and adjustment.
- Stay Agile and Generative (Master Performance): Strategy is a living process. Test, learn, and refine. In our work, we use the Promises Log and Minimum Viable Agreements to keep leadership teams aligned and adaptive.
- Own the Angst (Generative Context): If you feel a little out of your comfort zone, you’re on the right track. Strategy isn’t about eliminating risk. It’s about choosing where to take it.
Default vs. Designed Futures
We remind our clients:
You’re always in a strategy—either yours or someone else’s.
If you don’t design a way to win, you’ll end up serving someone who has.
Default futures happen when we follow habitual patterns, inherited plans, or unexamined industry norms. They arise not because they’re chosen, but because they go unchallenged. We keep doing what’s always been done—adjusting, reacting, optimising—without questioning whether these actions lead to meaningful advantage.
A Designed Future, on the other hand, is authored. It’s a conscious declaration of what you intend to cause in the world- and the structure you will generate to make it real. It requires vision, coherence, and action aligned to commitment, not convenience. It invites leadership teams to engage not just in doing more, but in becoming the kind of organisation that can realise that future.
Plans are useful. But only when they serve a strategy. Otherwise, they become busywork- comforting, but ultimately impotent.
Strategy is not a plan. It’s a stand you take. It’s a theorem you create and act on. It’s a future you commit to generate. And it’s the most powerful way to lead.
Further Reading and Sources
- Martin, Roger. A Plan Is Not a Strategy. Harvard Business Review.
- Lafley, A.G. & Martin, R.L. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. HBR Press.
- Froggatt, Alan. Genratec® MasterLiving Program Materials (1996–2025).
- Genratec® Tools: Promises Log, Minimum Viable Agreements, Generative Canvas.