A Strategy Is Also a Hypothesis

Strategies are designed to provide direction. They describe where an organisation wants to go, what it hopes to achieve and the actions it believes will help it get there.

But beneath every strategy sits something less visible: a set of assumptions about how change will happen.

We assume people will respond in certain ways, resources will be available, partners will have capacity, different parts of the organisation will work together and external conditions will develop broadly as expected.

Some of those assumptions will prove correct. Others won't.

Thinking of a strategy as a hypothesis doesn't make it less useful. It simply recognises that when we develop a strategy, we are making our best judgement about how today's actions might contribute to tomorrow's outcomes.

Every strategy contains assumptions

Consider an action designed to increase community preparedness.

Behind that action might sit assumptions about whether people will participate, which groups will be reached, whether information will influence behaviour, which organisations will be involved and whether the proposed approach will remain relevant as circumstances change.

Similarly, an organisational strategy might assume that different business units understand their role, that particular systems can support implementation, or that an external partner will continue providing an important service.

These assumptions are rarely unreasonable. Strategy would be impossible without them. We have to make decisions based on what we know and what we think is likely to happen.

The challenge arises when assumptions become invisible.

Some assumptions are more visible than others

Strategies usually make some assumptions explicit. Risk assessments, forecasts, demographic projections and financial modelling all attempt to understand future conditions.

Others are embedded more quietly in the actions themselves.

An action may implicitly assume that another team has capacity to participate. A new initiative may rely on existing relationships remaining strong. A project might depend on information being shared between parts of the organisation in ways that haven't actually been tested.

There are also assumptions about cause and effect: if we do this, we expect that to happen.

When these assumptions remain invisible, it becomes harder to recognise when they are no longer holding.

The world doesn't stand still once the strategy is written

This becomes increasingly important for strategies designed to operate over five, ten or twenty years.

The environment in which a strategy was developed will change. Staff will come and go. Technology will evolve. Funding arrangements may shift. Community expectations can change. New partnerships emerge while others weaken. Political, economic, environmental and social conditions may develop in unexpected ways.

Even within the organisation, implementation itself can create change.

An initiative may generate unexpected demand elsewhere. A new relationship may create opportunities that weren't anticipated. Something that appeared straightforward during planning may turn out to depend on several other parts of the organisation.

A strategy written today cannot completely predict that future. It doesn't need to.

Implementation generates evidence

Implementation is often thought about primarily in terms of delivery: have we completed the action, met the milestone or produced the intended output?

Those questions matter, but implementation also generates information.

It tells us how people actually respond. It reveals dependencies that weren't obvious during planning. It shows where coordination works well and where it becomes difficult. It exposes constraints, opportunities and unintended consequences.

In other words, implementation provides evidence about the assumptions sitting underneath the strategy.

That evidence can tell us not only whether an action was completed, but whether our understanding of the problem - and how change might occur - is still holding.

When reality doesn't match the strategy

A difference between what was expected and what actually happens isn't necessarily evidence that the strategy has failed. It may be evidence that something has been learned.

Perhaps an intervention reaches different people than expected. A partnership becomes more important than originally anticipated. An action creates an unintended consequence elsewhere. Or changing conditions mean an approach that made sense two years ago is becoming less effective.

The danger is not that these things happen. In complex environments, some of them inevitably will.

The greater risk is continuing to implement according to an assumption that experience is increasingly showing to be wrong.

Learning without abandoning direction

Adaptation can sometimes be mistaken for a lack of commitment: if the strategy keeps changing, how can it provide direction? But strategic direction and adaptability are not opposites.

An organisation can remain committed to an outcome while changing how it pursues it. In fact, continuing with an approach that is no longer working simply because it appears in an adopted strategy may move the organisation further away from the outcome it is trying to achieve.

The destination can remain relatively stable while the pathway evolves. This distinction becomes particularly important when organisations are dealing with uncertainty, interconnected systems and long implementation periods.

From delivering the plan to testing what we believe

Seeing strategy as a hypothesis creates a slightly different relationship with implementation.

The question is no longer only:

• Are we doing what the strategy said we would do?

We can also ask:

• What are we learning about what we believed would happen?

• What assumptions are holding?

• What has surprised us?

• What has changed?

• What are we seeing now that we couldn't have known when the strategy was developed?

None of this diminishes the importance of strategy. Organisations still need direction, priorities and accountability. But perhaps strategies work best when we are firm about the direction we are trying to travel, while remaining curious about whether the path we originally chose is still the best way to get there.