HBR Guide to Executing Your Strategy

CHAPTER 14

Strategy Briefing: An Example

by Stephen Bungay

In the decades since Peter Drucker first urged executives to manage by objectives, companies have replaced his famous “letter to the boss” with ever more elaborate and time-consuming processes for setting goals. The result is usually a profusion of measures and targets, finally approved six months into the year they are supposed to cover, that only add to the confusion about what really matters to the business. For most managers, the big unanswered question remains: What do you want me to do?

This piece is about how to answer that question. In the following pages you will read about a process I call strategy briefing, a technique derived from the military. Through it, managers and their ...