Strategy Is Baking A Better Cake
Strategy is misunderstood.
Strategy is notoriously difficult.
Getting Strategy right is one of, if not the most important, elements of business to get right. Always has, always will.
There is, however, another way to rethink strategy and stop doing what you have always done and copying the way you have always created strategy in your business.
A way to rethink this: Strategy is like baking a better cake!
Here’s how to think like a master baker.
We all start with the ability to bake a cake as long as we have a recipe, an oven and a set of ingredients.
You have the ability to follow the same recipe.
You have the ability to follow the instructions.
You have the ability to do it the same way it has always been done.
However…
We would not have different cakes or companies without changes.
It’s up to you if you tweak the recipe.
It’s up to your experience and gut feel to change the length it’s in the oven.
It’s a choice to invest in better ingredients.
It’s a choice to have different quality equipment.
It’s a choice to buy a new oven or release smaller cakes at different price points.
You could just keep doing it the way you have always done “strategy”.
You could keep having the same routine and annual planning cycle.
You could bring in the best of the best bakers to show you how to bake.
You could bring in the ‘best of the best consultants’ to help you create a different spreadsheet to run the business on.
You could bring in a performance coach to help bake (develop) your team and have a culture of learning and development.
You could learn how other companies are doing it
You could sample competitors’ products to see how they optimise their baking.
You could develop an optimised way of creating different beliefs and then bets.
You could tweak a few different elements of the recipe to improve the flavour, improve the sales of that cake.
Baking and strategy are more aligned than most people ever realise, it is however an opportunity to review the ingredients, the techniques and then test, learn and iterate a better way of baking your company’s success.
The next time you are looking at your company-wide strategy and reviewing how to improve your strategy, consider how you could actually improve the process and leverage how bakers think and test in their kitchens to get better cakes and better outcomes.
Don’t be the company that sticks to creating strategy the same way every year or just doing it because we have always done it like this. Especially in the age of AI and the ease in which competitors can be built and compete aggressively.
Create a better strategy, be better leaders, and accomplish more.
TLDR: Strategy is like baking: don’t just follow the old recipe. Upgrade ingredients, tools, and methods; test, tweak, and iterate to create better results and outpace copycat competitors in an AI-driven world.
