About this episode

Most leadership teams treat strategy as a document to produce once a year, then set aside. Stephen Bacon argues that’s backwards. In this conversation, he breaks down why strategy comes down to three questions every leader has to answer for themselves, why The Gunter Group won’t sell organizations a ready-made answer, and why the work never really stops once the plan is written.

WHAT WE COVER

Why strategy comes down to three questions
Bacon reduces strategy to three fundamental questions: where are we going, how will we get there, and why is it right for us to go there. He explains why that same framing holds up at the enterprise level, the business unit level, and the functional level alike.

Why we don’t sell clients the answers
Big consultancies will hand a leadership team a strategy. Bacon explains why that approach backfires, and why a strategy nobody in the room helped build usually ends up sitting on a shelf.

Why every organization’s “flavor” of strategy is different
Growth means something different to a founder-led company than it does to an employee-owned one. Bacon shares two client examples, including one where “growth” was actually about rewarding long-tenured employee owners, to show why the real goal underneath a strategy is rarely the generic label leadership starts with.

Why strategy never actually finishes
Bacon introduces the strategy “Infinity Loop”, his framework for why strategy is a living cycle, not a one-time event. He also explains where an Office of Strategy Management fits into keeping that cycle alive.