Here's a question I like to ask leadership teams. What has your strategy decided not to do this year? I don't mean the things you ran out of time for. I mean the things you looked at, considered seriously, and chose to leave on the table on purpose.
It's harder than it sounds. Most of us can reel off our priorities without pausing. The list of what we've ruled out is usually much shorter, and often it's blank.
That second list is where strategy actually lives. A plan that names everything you'll do, and says little about what you'll set aside, is really a set of hopes with a budget attached. The honest trade-offs are what turn it into a strategy. Where you'll compete, how you'll win, and what you'll deliberately step back from.
Ferrari turns away buyers it could easily sell to, year after year. Its founder, Enzo Ferrari, set the rule the company still repeats today:
"Ferrari will always deliver one car less than the market demands."
So it holds output to fewer than fourteen thousand cars a year, a fraction of what a premium rival like Porsche makes, while demand runs well ahead of supply. Keeping supply permanently short of demand means Ferrari never discounts, never sits on unsold stock, and never loses the desirability that lets it charge what it does.
Lush, the cosmetics company based in Dorset, made a different kind of strategic trade-off. In 2021 it switched off its Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat accounts, worth millions of followers, because it judged that the harm those platforms do to young people's mental health clashed with what the brand stands for.
Lush has said it won't return until they are made safer. Every rival was pouring budget into exactly those channels, so the cost of the no was real and immediate. Lush put its energy into its shops, its website and its email list instead, and its sales held up. It traded reach for trust.
Ruling things out can feel like loss. What it really buys you is focus. Every no protects the handful of yeses that matter.
One thing to try this week: write down a single thing your strategy has chosen not to do this year. If it comes easily, you're in good shape. If it doesn't, you've found something worth a conversation.
If this topic is interesting to you, I run a regular open workshop on Strategic Thinking. You can use the code OPEN15 to get 15% off.
