The Terminology Debate
A typical example of the differences between strategy, planning, and execution might look something like Table 1 (a synthesis of common definitions).
Table 1.
Seems clear and logical. So, what’s wrong with it?
As one subjective way to categorize different types of decisions—or ways to make them—that some may find useful in some situations, nothing.
Similarly, as there’s nothing wrong with calling a brown-throated thrush a sabiá-de-garganta-marrom if you’re Portuguese or speaking to one.
However, as an objective, universally correct, one-and-only way to categorize and describe how all business decisions are made? A lot.
The biggest issue with the above—and most other—ways of defining strategy, planning, and execution is that these definitions are not based on the actual characteristics of real decisions.
In other words, they are not grounded in first-principles thinking.
That means:
- The categories don’t represent anything meaningful in the real world.
- The categories can be overlapping and even contradictory.
- The categories don’t necessarily sum up to a cohesive whole.
For example, no decision is fundamentally about why or how—or any other combination of why, what, how, who, when, etc.
Even in ‘strategic’ decisions, there is always a who (e.g., the company) and a when (e.g., from now on). They also always involve how—for instance, how the company will generate profits for shareholders, achieve its ‘strategic aspiration,’ or remove a bottleneck that stands in the way of success.
All decisions have a why—a reason they are made.
Similarly, a plan is an integrated set of choices (decisions), just like a roadmap or even the proper way to perform a barbell back squat at the gym (brace your core, control descent, stop at the bottom, etc.).
All movement is an integrated set of decisions that create focus and fit.
Using criteria such as ‘creates competitive advantage’ or ‘delivers unique value’ is no different from saying ‘is better than what competitors do’ or ‘results in significant profits.’
No individual decision—or set of decisions—has the inherent characteristic of ‘creating competitive advantage.’ Some may lead to it, but that is an outcome, not a criterion you can use while making decisions.
“I only make decisions that result in competitive advantage!”
Oh, really? Well, I only make decisions that lead to no competitive advantage!
What about the idea that strategy is ‘the logic that guides decision-making’?
Well, the logic behind putting bread, butter, ham, and cheese on a grocery list is that someone wants to make a sandwich.
So, is your strategy to make a sandwich (which also describes why)?
And is your plan to buy bread, butter, ham, and cheese?
Or is that also a strategy since it, too, is an integrated set of choices?
It would certainly make less sense to have a grocery list that included buying bread, an airliner, and doing a barbell back squat.
Those choices would not be well-integrated.
How about execution?
If execution is simply the ‘implementation of the plan,’ how is it different from planning—if planning is the implementation of strategy and integrated sets of decisions constitute a plan?
That would mean both planning and execution involve implementing plans.
How is that helpful?
Yes, there is clear malicious intent here to mock and deconstruct these definitions, but the fact remains: if you want to, you can do that—because they are not based on fundamental characteristics of different types of decisions or meaningful ways to group them.
This allows for almost any interpretation, including contradictions and redundancies.
This is possible because the terminology debate is fundamentally about subjective, often nonsensical categorizations with little to no connection to the real world.
Subjective Terminology or Differences in Fundamental Characteristics?
Critics might argue that much of the discussion about strategy, planning, and execution isn’t just about terminology but about their fundamental differences.
True, on the surface, it may seem that way—but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
A lot of the debate revolves around subjective viewpoints on how to call the terms.
Take, for example, Roger Martin’s video, Strategy Is Not a Plan, which makes several claims about the differences between strategy and planning.
We can use his arguments to illustrate how much of what is presented as fundamental characteristics is, in reality, a matter of subjective terminology.
It’s more like a well-known author describing their thinking process for creating a good book (one possible option and one possibly incomplete description) rather than identifying the holistic, fundamental characteristics of the mechanisms that create good books, regardless of the author.
Disclaimer: This isn’t a critique of Roger Martin or his views—the same issues are found in most definitions. His video simply provides a well-known and widely understood example, as it has over 5 million views, and the idea that strategies are not plans is accepted and repeated by many, for example, on social media.
Some of the key differences he outlines between strategy and planning include:
- Strategy is a set of integrated and coherent choices, while planning (he alternates between “planning” and “plans” throughout the video, but we understand what he means) doesn’t require such coherence.
- Strategy is about what you don’t control, while planning is about what you do control.
- Strategy creates ‘angst,’ while planning is ‘comforting.’
He also suggests the following ways to ‘escape the planning trap’:
- Accept ‘angst’—it’s impossible to prove in advance that a strategy will work.
- Lay out the logic of the strategy by identifying “what would have to be true” for it to succeed.
To illustrate his point, he uses Southwest Airlines as an example of strategy in action.
The airline made a series of deliberate ‘strategic’ choices:
- Point-to-point model instead of hub-and-spoke.
- Only 737s, instead of multiple aircraft models.
- No meals on flights, instead of offering them.
- Online booking only, instead of using travel agents.
Because these choices created focus and fit, they led to significantly lower costs than traditional airlines.
This, in turn, allowed Southwest to offer lower prices—not only making it more attractive to a specific type of customer but also allowing it to compete with Greyhound buses by offering faster travel at a comparable cost.
Let’s examine each of the distinctive characteristics in more detail.
Integrated Set of Coherent Choices that Create Focus and Fit
Is coherence between decisions a fundamental characteristic of a strategy but not of a plan?
An incoherent plan might involve going to the grocery store to do barbell back squats, buying an airliner, and picking up some milk.
Most people would call that a poor plan.
Why?
Because the decisions in it don’t fit together. Why would you do squats in a grocery store, let alone buy an airliner?
On the other hand, a plan to go to the store to buy milk, bread, and butter—or to go to the gym to do squats—makes sense.
Why? Because those decisions form a coherent whole. They fit well together.
The examples are intentionally absurd, but you can apply this test to any plan. What you’ll find is that all plans that aren’t poor have coherence among their decisions.
So, coherence isn’t a unique characteristic of strategy—it’s simply a characteristic of what makes both strategies and plans ‘good.’
It’s one factor plans and strategies have in common, not the defining trait that separates the two.
The irony of arguing that plans lack coherence while strategies do not is that the very examples Roger Martin uses come from what companies call ‘strategies.’
Sure, they may call the process ‘strategic planning,’ and maybe they even call the output a ‘strategic plan,’ but often they simply call it their ‘strategy.’
So, for many companies, ‘strategies’ are lists of disconnected actions—such as building a plant, hiring people, and launching a product (examples Martin uses to illustrate planning).
So, in reality, he’s not critiquing planning—he’s critiquing strategy.
Bad strategy, many would argue.
Or, to be precise, he is not critiquing planning or strategy; he is essentially critiquing senseless list-making as a meaningful way to influence the future.
And in that, he is indeed right. Creating incohesive lists is not good anything.
In reality, he’s illustrating the difference between good and bad strategy—or good and bad plans: good ones have coherence among decisions, while bad ones do not.
That makes sense, but the same logic applies to all plans (in fact, all ways of grouping decisions across multiple types of decisions)—including something as simple as a grocery list.
In fact, also Roger Martin acknowledges this, as he also argues elsewhere that strategy and ‘execution’ are the same.
Well, that is indeed a logical conclusion from his definition of strategy, but that’s because it’s so broad that it applies to all decision-making.
Which raises the question: if all decision-making is ‘strategy,’ why is there even a need for the word?
How is it helpful?
Level of Control
Is having no control a fundamental characteristic of strategy but not of planning?
Roger Martin’s examples of controllable and comforting ‘planning’ decisions include building a factory, hiring more people, and launching a new product.
Can you control whether you build a factory, hire more people, or launch a product?
Sure.
But as it happens, you can also just as easily control, whether:
- You fly a point-to-point model instead of hub-and-spoke.
- You use only 737s instead of multiple aircraft models.
- You eliminate in-flight meals.
- Customers must book online instead of through travel agents.
All the examples he provides for both strategy and planning fall within a company’s control.
There is no difference.
The real distinction isn’t about whether strategic or planning decisions are controllable—it’s about whether you control their outcomes.
That’s a fundamental characteristic of any decision: you control what you do (inputs), but you don’t control what happens as a consequence (outputs).
Martin also claims that strategy is about revenue, while planning is about costs.
But all of his own examples of strategic decisions affect both.
Ironically, every Southwest ‘strategic’ decision was made with cost impact in mind.
Customers didn’t specifically want 737s or fewer in-flight meals—those choices were made because they reduced costs.
Similarly, a planning decision like launching a new product affects revenue. That’s why companies do it—to generate revenue by meeting customer needs.
How is eliminating meals a customer-driven, revenue-focused ‘strategic’ decision, while launching a new product is a ‘planning’ decision based on cost?
That makes no sense.
If strategy is about revenue, then a telemarketer choosing which customer to call is making a high-stakes ‘strategic’ decision with ‘angst,’ while a company investing $100 billion in an AI data center is simply making a ‘comfortable’ planning decision.
How is that a useful distinction between planning and strategy?
Level of ‘Comfort’
Is having ‘angst’ a fundamental characteristic of strategy but not of planning?
Martin presents this idea as advice on how to ‘avoid the planning trap.’
Let’s look at his examples again.
- Strategy = not serving meals on flights.
- Planning = launching a new product.
How is deciding not to serve meals more ‘angst-inducing’ than launching a new product?
How is it supposedly comforting to invest thousands of hours and millions of dollars into developing a new product, but somehow scary to stop serving $10 meals?
The argument about angst was meant to follow the supposed difference in control—strategy being about revenue and planning about costs.
But as we’ve already established, all decisions operate under uncertainty, and different types of decisions impact both revenue and costs.
That means any type of decision can create angst.
Even if the claim is that angst comes from making multiple interconnected choices, not just a single one like eliminating meals, the same logic applies to all plans.
Are we supposed to believe that there’s no angst in planning to launch multiple new products and install new production capacity to support them?
Is there no uncertainty about whether those products will sell?
No risk that production changes won’t be completed in time for the launch season?
And are those decisions really only about costs, with no relevance to customers?
Ways to ‘Escape the Planning Trap’
How about the top two pieces of advice Roger Martin gives for how to ‘escape the planning trap’?
The first, accepting ‘angst,’ has already been covered. But what about ‘laying out the logic’ and asking, ‘what would have to be true’?
Are these fundamental characteristics of strategy, inapplicable to plans?
Why wouldn’t asking ‘what would have to be true’ be a good idea for a product launch or building a plant?
Even for a single decision, that kind of reasoning makes sense and is often done implicitly. And when applied to an entire plan—an integrated set of decisions—it becomes even more useful.
You can test this yourself, but all plans are only valid under specific assumptions.
They may not always be made explicit, but they exist, nonetheless.
A plan to hire more people only makes sense if the market is growing (simplified for effect). A plan to build a factory in a specific location only makes sense if the government grants certain tax breaks and demand grows as expected.
An annual operating plan, which serves as the foundation for a budget, is valid only under given assumptions—such as a market growth rate above 5% and stable raw material prices.
But if the market declines by 5% and raw material prices rise by 10%, the plan should be revised, leading to different decisions. In one scenario, the company hires people; in the other, it lays them off.
Again, applying this ‘strategy-only’ advice to planning reveals no meaningful difference. Making explicit the logic behind any group of decisions—whether labeled as a strategy, plan, roadmap, or policy—is always beneficial.
Under certain conditions, a set of decisions makes sense. Under different conditions, it does not.
That means there must be mechanisms to continuously test and revise that logic, adapting decisions—whether they are called strategy, plans, roadmaps, or policies—to changing circumstances.
So, once again, we haven’t uncovered a fundamental characteristic exclusive to strategy or any specific category of decisions.
Instead, we are describing general principles that apply to all decision-making frameworks aimed at shaping the future.
All Strategies Are Plans
All strategies can be framed as a plan without changing their content.
For example, consider these strategies from respected experts:
- Strategy as an integrated set of choices: “A tech startup decides to differentiate itself by focusing on a niche market of cybersecurity solutions for small businesses, choosing this focus to create a competitive advantage over generalized security providers.”
- Strategy as a guiding rule: “Launch fewer products but spend more time designing them for lower cost.”
Now, reframing them as plans:
- The tech startup’s plan is to differentiate itself by focusing on a niche market of cybersecurity solutions for small businesses to create a competitive advantage over generalized security providers.
- The plan is to launch fewer products but spend more time designing them for lower cost.
How would an average business professional understand the contents differently?
Whether strategy is a guiding rule, an integrated set of decisions, or a plan is largely a matter of semantics. It reflects personal opinions and preferences but tells us little about the fundamental characteristics of how value is created.
It’s a formatting question—like whether a strategy is written in a Word document or scribbled on a piece of napkin.
The same logic applies to virtually any strategy format:
Strategy as a position: A luxury car brand positions itself in the high-end market through exclusivity, craftsmanship, and premium pricing.
As a plan: The luxury car brand’s plan is to position itself in the high-end market through exclusivity, craftsmanship, and premium pricing.
Strategy as a ploy: A fast-food chain announces a major price cut on its most popular items right before a competitor’s big product launch, forcing the rival to either lower prices or lose market share.
As a plan: The fast-food chain’s plan is to announce a major price cut on its most popular items right before a competitor’s big product launch, forcing the rival to either lower prices or lose market share.
Strategy as a perspective: A tech company embeds innovation into its identity, making experimentation and risk-taking fundamental to every decision, from hiring to product development.
As a plan: The tech company’s plan is to embed innovation into its identity, making experimentation and risk-taking fundamental to every decision, from hiring to product development.
Sure, they are very high-level, but that’s a characteristic of the decisions in them.
Ultimately, terms like “integrated sets of decisions,” “plans,” “guiding rules,” “positioning,” “ploys,” or “perspectives” are all ways of describing a set of grouped decisions.
At the same time, they are all, in essence, plans.
Strategy to Plan Disqualifier
Many strategy authors provide ‘disqualifiers’ for testing whether a particular concept qualifies as a strategy. Here is one that determines whether a given strategy is, in fact, a plan in disguise.
Use this ChatGPT prompt to test whether your ‘strategy’ is actually a plan:
[GOAL]
The goal is to evaluate, on a scale from 0 to 10, whether the given strategy can fundamentally serve as a plan, based purely on first principles. Translate the given strategy into a statement formatted explicitly as a plan without adding, removing, or modifying any content.
The strategy: [user, enter your strategy here]
[RETURN FORMAT]
- Write out the original strategy in the format: “Original Strategy: [original strategy].”
- Write out the original strategy reformatted as a plan: “As a plan: [replace this with the plan format, using either ‘the plan is’ (if there is no subject) or ‘the subject’s plan is’ (if there is a subject)].”
- Provide a numerical rating: “Suitability as a plan: [rating] / 10.”
[WARNINGS]
- Do not use criteria specific to particular types of plans (e.g., strategic, tactical, operational, detailed, timelines, rationale, etc.).
- Do not evaluate the quality, practicality, or effectiveness of the strategy.
- Do not deduct points for the presence of elements (such as rationale) that are not fundamental but do not contradict fundamental characteristics.
- Do not change the subject of the strategy, even in form.
What you will find is that all ‘strategies,’ regardless of how they are framed, can also be stated as plans. The only way to differentiate them is to establish more detailed criteria regarding what kind of plan is being used for comparison.
One common approach is to compare strategies to detailed operational plans and highlight their major differences.
Another, even more popular method is to compare a strategy to something irrational as a plan—such as an incohesive list of actions similar to ‘go to the store to buy milk and do a barbell back squat,’ like ‘launch a product and hire people.’
However, if the decisions in the ‘plan’ are incoherent, then it is just as flawed as a plan, ploy, position, perspective, or strategy.
The reason why all strategies can be stated as plan is because all strategies and plans have same fundamental characteristics: they are set of integrated decisions (including the exception when there is only a single decision), aimed at reaching a desired future, under specific assumptions.
How good the decisions are or how well they are integrated speaks to the quality of the strategy or plan, not whether it is a strategy or a plan.
Whether the desired future is called a vision, objective, goal, or aspiration is semantics—they are all desired futures of some sort, i.e., describing what the strategy or plan (the choices within them) is meant to achieve.
Whether the assumptions behind the strategies or plans make sense—or, let alone, are effective—is irrelevant.
No matter what group of decisions (or a decision) you come up with, a fundamental characteristic of all decisions is that they make more sense under some assumptions and less sense under others, regardless of how well those assumptions are understood, let alone explicitly described.
And all decisions, and therefore all strategies and plans, are based on some assumptions, since they are about influencing the future, and there is no data about the future. Only assumptions, regardless of if those assumptions are influenced or based on data from the history.
This is not to say that it is useless to distinguish plans and strategies, but it is to say that the criteria often used aren’t based on fundamental characteristics in the real world—only on subjective opinions.
And this is the fundamental reason for the endless debate and confusion.
Even the Experts Contradict Themselves
As if the ambiguity of definitions weren’t enough, strategy experts often contradict one another.
For example, many strategy experts seem to claim that strategy is about “why” while planning is about “how.”
However, that contradicts for example Richard Rumelt’s definition of strategy.
In Good Strategy Bad Strategy, he writes: “Good strategy is not just ‘what’ you are trying to do. It is also ‘why’ and ‘how’ you are doing it.”
Who to believe?
And that’s not the worst part.
You’d expect different experts to disagree, but they often contradict even themselves.
Consider how a well-known strategy expert in social media once described the difference between strategy and planning as follows:
- Strategy: a logic
- Planning: a process
That sounds like a clear and reasonable distinction (regardless of whether it’s right, wrong, or useful).
However, in a subsequent post, the same expert argued that strategy must not be a static document but instead a continuous process:
“Strategy is a continuous process!”
So now we have:
- Strategy: a continuous process
- Planning: a process
What exactly is the difference again?
And as if that weren’t enough, in yet another post, the same expert also claimed:
“A plan is a process.”
So now we have:
- Strategy: a continuous process
- Planning: a process
- Plan: a process
At what point does all of this just start to become meaningless nonsense?
“Start to become?”
(laughter)
And if that isn’t confusing enough, as icing on the cake, Richard Rumelt quotes ‘strategy authority’ (his words) Gary Hamel in his book The Crux: “We also understand planning as a ‘process.’ The only problem is that process doesn’t produce strategy — it produces plans.”
However, in chapter ‘Strategy Is a Journey,’ he also concludes: “Strategy should be an ongoing process.”
So, what to believe?
The reason why so many different definitions make sense—yet contradict one another—is that many of these terms share underlying characteristics.
The reason why it’s possible to argue for all strategies, planning and plans that they are processes is because they all are about integrated sets of decisions.
They are all about making decisions and fundamentally it’s decision-making that is always a process, and any set of decisions can also be described as a process.
These characteristics aren’t always utilized in the examples that are being critiqued, meaning the critique often targets a caricatured version of the concept rather than its true form (i.e., its bad version).
In other words, experts are looking at fundamentally the same thing from different angles and arguing why their perspective is the only right one—without realizing that another perspective can be just as valid.
They are just different points of view or different terms to call the same thing: some sort of decision-making or sets of decisions.
Experts constantly mix characteristics common to all good decision-making with those that apply only to specific types of decisions or ways of grouping decisions, such as ‘strategic’ decisions or ‘strategies.’
Execution Can Mean Literally Anything
And if it’s impossible to get a clear difference between planning and strategy, execution is no exception. The definitions literally cover everything.
For example, according to Roger Martin, strategy and execution are the same.
He argues that people should stop distinguishing between strategy and execution, as both involve making choices under uncertainty and competition.
Therefore, he contends, there is no reason to separate them.
What he doesn’t clarify, though, is why we need the concept of strategy for then?
Why not call everything ‘execution’ or simply ‘decision-making’?
He also doesn’t mention where planning fits in all that.
If strategy and execution are the same, and all decision-making is really strategy, then what is deciding on factories, launching products, or hiring people?
Also, strategy?
Which means that when he was arguing how strategy is different from planning, he was really arguing how strategy is different from strategy?
It’s all very confusing.
Others seem to define ‘execution’ as simply ‘implementing’ the strategy—or, even more vaguely, as ‘getting excellent results.’
The former is always some form of [strategy] + [everything else], meaning there may be a narrow definition of what strategy is (although even that may be missing), and then everything else companies do is ‘execution.’
By that definition, when people say, ‘it’s all about execution’ (or some other cliché form of that), what they’re really saying is that it’s all about everything except that 200-page PowerPoint deck they made at that two-day offsite.
No kidding?
And a typical key component of ‘strategy execution’ is planning.
So, planning is execution, and whatever gets the plans executed is execution.
And if you go down that road, even the business strategy is executing the corporate strategy, corporate strategy is executing the corporate vision, or the shareholders’ expectations to make money.
And so on.
It’s all matryoshka dolls inside matryoshka dolls. Or turtles on top of turtles. Whichever you prefer.
And the confusion—or absurdity, whichever you prefer—wouldn’t be complete without an overlap with the other definitions.
For example, in the 4DX model (Four Disciplines of Execution), one of them is called focus—meaning concentrating on doing only one or a small number of things at a time, instead of trying to do too many things at once.
Well, wait a minute.
Didn’t the strategy experts define strategy’s key characteristic as creating focus and fit? Now you have another set of experts saying that that’s execution.
So, strategy is about focus, planning is about focus, and—yes, you got it—execution is about focus.
It seems that focus, or creating focus, is indeed a vital characteristic of decision-making. Since it has been claimed as the hallmark characteristic of so many different disciplines, but it applies to all kinds of decisions or ways to group decisions, what really separates strategy, planning, and execution?
So far, we’ve learned very little about that.
(To be continued in Part 3: What’s the Problem?)
(Read also Part1: Introduction)
Practical insights
- A lot of terminology debate is based on subjective opinions.
- Creating focus and fit applies to all kinds of decisions.
- All strategies are plans, after all.
- Experts contradict each other—and even themselves.
- According to experts, strategy, planning, and execution can mean anything.
