Strategy is dead. Long live strategy!

Red and Yellow strategy

Red and Yellow strategy

It was the title of my presentation’s first slide, the one I made for my speech at a business conference in Dubai. I deliberately made it a little bit provocative to invite participants for discussion. And I succeeded — the discussion appeared to be very vivid. Many entrepreneurs and CEOs do believe that long-term thinking is dead because of the “fast-changing world.” I don’t see it this way, so I decided to summarise its key takeaways in this article.

Old good classic

“Strategic planning” was the name of a subject I learned in a business school almost twenty years ago. Our teachers were proponents of a classical strategic theory with PEST, SWOT, and many other tools. The theory didn’t look simple, but its logic was rather clear. If I simplify it a little bit, I could describe it as follows:

– Learn your environment, both at the macro and micro level.

– Learn your strengths and weaknesses

– Find new opportunities and identify threats

– Formulate long-term goals

– Find …