You can copy someone else’s strategy playbook and still lose. What separates the businesses that pull ahead is usually not the brilliance of their moves, but the absence of a handful of self‑inflicted wounds. Here are the mistakes we see most often.
Mistake #1: Confusing goals with strategy
“Grow revenue by 50%” is not a strategy. It’s a target. A strategy answers how — which customers, which channels, which advantages. Without the how, targets just create pressure without direction.
Mistake #2: Refusing to say no
The other big trap is trying to keep every option open. Every “yes” to a new segment, product, or channel is a “no” to focus everywhere else. Great strategies feel narrower than leadership teams are usually comfortable with — that’s the point.
- Kill the two initiatives with the weakest theory of impact this quarter
- Decide one segment you’re going to say no to for the next 12 months
- Pick one metric that determines whether the strategy is working
“The cost of saying yes to everything is that nothing gets your best work.”
The takeaway
Once a quarter, run a strategy review that starts with the question, “What are we going to stop doing?”