Does Your Strategy Have a Spine?

To clarify their strategy and communication around strategy, executives should create a simple document called a strategy spine. They should begin by imagining, as if they were an independent reporter, their company about five years into successful future. What would that success look like? What choices made it possible? Then, based on this imagined future, they can fill out the six elements of their strategy spine: planned sources of revenue, key operating assumptions, key goals, revenue implications of those goals and assumptions, investments needed, and additional infrastructure needs. The strategy spine should never be regarded as a completed work, but rather a living document to be modified as conditions change.