You test a strategy by placing two views side by side: what is happening outside and what the executive team itself thinks of it. If those two views diverge sharply, or if the executive team members diverge sharply among themselves, that is the signal that the strategy is due for reassessment.
This is not a matter of feeling that you resolve with a discussion in the board meeting. It is a measurable difference: outside versus inside, and within the executive team itself.
The first view concerns trends, regulation and competitor movements. A strategy that was set two years ago is based on an assessment of the world at that moment. A strategic assumption about market growth, customer behaviour or the availability of staff may in the meantime be outdated without anyone having explicitly established that.
A manufacturing company with 180 employees set its strategy at a time when raw material prices were stable and its main competitor was mainly competing on price. Two years later that competitor had switched to a service model and raw material prices had become structurally more volatile. No one on the executive team had explicitly named that; it was scattered across the minds of individual board members. Systematically gathering the outside view, for example with a horizon scan, makes visible which assumptions are under pressure before that becomes visible in the revenue figures.
The second view is created by having each executive team member indicate separately where he or she places the organisation on five strategic axes. Not in a joint conversation, but independently of one another, so that social pressure and hierarchy play no role in the outcome.
At a service provider with 90 employees, the commercial director consistently gave higher scores on growth ambition than the operations director. As long as that was not visible, it led to delays in investment decisions: one held back, the other pushed forward, and no one understood why decisions kept stalling. Once the spread was put on paper, it became clear that this was not a matter of character, but of an unspoken difference in view about the strategic direction.
The executive team's average score says little. What matters more is how far apart the board members lie from one another on each axis. A small spread means that the executive team is in practice working from the same view, even if that view later has to be revised. A large spread means that decisions are being made while the executive team disagrees among itself about the starting position, which often only becomes noticeable at the moment a difficult choice arises.
If that spread is concentrated on one axis, for example risk appetite or internationalisation, then you know exactly where the conversation needs to start. If the discussion remains vague, the page on what to do when the executive team disagrees about priorities offers a next step for that specific situation.
The real test arises when you overlay the outside view and the inside view. On the axes where the outside world is changing quickly and the executive team shows a large spread, the risk is highest: there, decisions are being steered by a view that is already not shared internally, while the environment is also still shifting. On axes where outside and inside are reasonably stable, there is less reason for haste.
At the manufacturing company mentioned earlier, it turned out that the axis "price versus service" was both moving externally and divided internally between board members. That was not by coincidence the axis on which the organisation lagged furthest behind in adjusting its approach.
A strategy is not a document that you test once and then set aside. How often a reassessment is needed depends on the speed at which the organisation's market is changing and on how recent the previous test was; the page on how often you should recalibrate a strategy elaborates on that consideration further. You can get a first impression more quickly: a free mini-test of ten questions already gives an indication of the pressure profile of your own situation, without requiring an extensive process for it.
The first step is to actually record the outside view and the inside view separately, rather than letting them merge into a single meeting where the loudest voice determines the picture. Once that is on paper, it becomes visible on which axes the tension lies and whether that tension originates from the outside world, from disagreement within the executive team, or from both.
After that, the question naturally shifts from "does our strategy still hold up" to "what does this mean for who needs to do something". Themes from the pressure test then become concrete tasks, hours and systems that have to land somewhere. Anyone who wants to know what a sharpened decision agenda means for the daily division of work within the organisation will find the workload scan for that at ftetoai.com.
Stel uw vraag. Vaak zit de echte vraag een laag dieper — daar mag ik naar vragen.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.