What’s the value of an unwritten strategy?

Ask anyone if they have a strategy, and the answer is usually “yes”. But ask them to show it to you, and they might sheepishly admit it’s not written down. That doesn’t mean they were lying: whether unstated or unexamined, or even confused or illogical, there’s always some chain of reasoning connecting your actions to your goals — that’s the essence of strategy.

Whether you have it in a document, or whether the strategy-as-written matches the reality, are different questions.

We have a norm against unstated or unwritten strategies, but what’s the real value of documenting our strategy? On the plus side, it helps us examine the implicit: by externalizing the strategy, we can critique it, test it, adjust it. It also promotes alignment, giving us a way to build shared a strategy with others.

But there are downsides. For new or small organizations, leaving a strategy unstated may allow flexibility that codification would squeeze out. We may not want the commitment that comes from writing it down. And the more effort we put into documenting and sharing it, the higher we’ve raised the bar for future adjustments.

There’s a happy middle ground in the form of lighter, more agile approaches to strategy. Tailor the process and its documentation to the organizational context: if your small team expects to adjust strategy in three months, don’t spend more than a few days crafting it; capture it in as few words as possible; and share only a rough, high-level version with partners.

Or if your operating context is so volatile that you’re changing course every other week, zoom out one level of abstraction and set your strategy based on what remains constant over a longer period: your overall understanding of how change happens, your core values, and your operating principles.

In all cases, use your strategy to define the open questions and how you’ll answer them as you evolve your approach. What do you need to learn in the coming period (whether a month or a year or a decade) to set the next strategy, and how will you learn it? Agile strategy means learning strategy.