Strategic Courage: The Hardest Part of Strategy Is What You Give Up

Nobody tells you about the grief involved in strategy.

Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. The kind where you let go of the business you built to make room for the business you're actually building. The grief that follows the loss of a potential future, regardless of how necessary it is.

You've spent the last few weeks learning how to choose strategic priorities and position yourself in your market. But here's what makes all of that theoretical:

You haven't given anything up yet.

Strategy becomes real, truly real, the moment you say no to something you used to say yes to. A client type. A service offering. A market you've served for years. A partnership that no longer aligns.

This is the hardest part of Strategic Design. Not the thinking or the planning. The letting go.

The Problem

Here's a common scenario: A financial advisor spends three years building relationships with small business owners. Good people. Decent clients. But when she decides to focus exclusively on corporate executives, she realizes she'll need to transition 40% of her book over time.

The most common reaction? 'I feel like I'm betraying them. Like all that work was wasted.'"

That's the grief. And it feels like taking steps backward. It feels like failure.

Saying No triggers this inherent fear of scarcity, this idea that saying No will kick off a cascade of lost business and ruin. Since our identity is so tied up in our professional life, who are we if we start carving off pieces of that life? And if we take this small step now, we will never be able to undo it. We will forever live at the bottom of the abyss we just leapt into with a meek and hesitant “No”.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe all grief is dramatic when you're the one experiencing it.

If you know me, you know I’ve got a young son, and this reminds me of what we often tell him: the only way to be brave, to show courage, is to first be afraid. Grief leads to fear, fear leads courage, and courage leads to the future of your choosing.

You will get to choose client segments that fit your strategy and energize you, turning away those that don’t. Choose services that reinforce your new positioning, cutting those that dilute it. Choose pricing models and fee structures that attract the ideal clients, and repel the rest. Choose geographic markets you want to serve for whatever reason, partnerships that align with your new direction, and the new identity you have crafted for yourself … and casting off the pieces that don’t fit anymore.

And if you don't choose?

Your positioning stays generic. Your marketing speaks to everyone and no one. You compete on price because you have no other way to differentiate. And when you're ready to build efficient systems—Stage 5 work—you'll realize you can't systematize chaos.

Stage 5 only works if you finish Stage 4. And finishing Stage 4 means making the cut.

So you’ve got a choice if you’re bold and courageous enough to make it.

How to choose

When you’re faced with new opportunities, run through these questions and let them guide you to the best choice.

• Does this reinforce or dilute my strategic position?
• Does this energize or drain me?
• Does this attract ideal clients or wrong-fit clients?
• Would I choose this again if I were starting fresh today?

Will you be courageous, commit and say Yes? Commit and say No? Do you trust in yourself and the work you put into developing that strategy? Don’t second guess yourself now.

The emotional reality is that it’ll feel like subtracting before it feels like adding. You have to experience the loss, and even if you’re saying goodbye to work you didn’t love and clients who drove you nuts … there’s no two ways about it, it still feels bad. But courage, specifically strategic courage, means doing it anyway.

The grief is real, but it's short. The relief lasts. Six months after making the hard calls, they’ll say the same thing: 'I should have done this years ago.'

Not because it was easy. Because it was worth it.

I offer a Focus engagement as a diagnostic to help you figure out what the right tradeoffs are. If you’re ready to make the hard calls that will define your future, I’m only a couple clicks away. Reply to this email or click on this link to schedule time to discuss if a Focus engagement is the right next step for you.